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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         17th October 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
  32 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
  33 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
  34 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
  35 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
  36 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
  37 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
  38
  39 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
  40 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
  41 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
  42 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
  43 of this story.)</p>
  44
  45 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
  46 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
  47 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
  48 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
  49 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
  50 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
  51 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
  52 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
  53 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
  54 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
  55
  56 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
  57 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
  58 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
  59 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
  60
  61 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
  62 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
  63
  64 <p><blockquote><pre>
  65 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
  66 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
  67 </pre></blockquote></p>
  68
  69 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
  70 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
  71 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
  72 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
  73 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
  74 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
  75 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
  76 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
  77
  78 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
  79 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
  80
  81 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
  82 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
  83 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
  84 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
  85 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
  86
  87 <p><blockquote><pre>
  88 Task: isenkram-packages
  89 Section: hardware
  90 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
  91  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
  92  proposed.
  93 Test-new-install: show show
  94 Relevance: 8
  95 Packages: for-current-hardware
  96
  97 Task: isenkram-firmware
  98 Section: hardware
  99 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 100  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 101  packages are proposed.
 102 Test-new-install: mark show
 103 Relevance: 8
 104 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
 105 </pre></blockquote></p>
 106
 107 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
 108 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
 109 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
 110 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
 111 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
 112
 113 <p><blockquote><pre>
 114 #!/bin/sh
 115 #
 116 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 117 export PATH
 118 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 119 </pre></blockquote></p>
 120
 121 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 122 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
 123
 124 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 125 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 126 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 127 install.</p>
 128
 129 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
 130 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
 131 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
 132
 133       </div>
 134       <div class="tags">
 135
 136
 137         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
 138
 139
 140       </div>
 141     </div>
 142     <div class="padding"></div>
 143
 144     <div class="entry">
 145       <div class="title">
 146         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
 147       </div>
 148       <div class="date">
 149          4th October 2014
 150       </div>
 151       <div class="body">
 152         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
 153 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
 154 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
 155 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
 156
 157 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
 158
 159 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
 160 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
 161 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
 162
 163       </div>
 164       <div class="tags">
 165
 166
 167         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>.
 168
 169
 170       </div>
 171     </div>
 172     <div class="padding"></div>
 173
 174     <div class="entry">
 175       <div class="title">
 176         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
 177       </div>
 178       <div class="date">
 179          4th October 2014
 180       </div>
 181       <div class="body">
 182         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
 183 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
 184 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
 185 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
 186 Dibb.</p>
 187
 188 <p>I just wrapped up
 189 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
 190 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
 191 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
 192 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
 193 0.17.</p>
 194
 195 <ul>
 196
 197  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
 198  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
 199    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
 200  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
 201  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
 202  <li>Fix include orders</li>
 203  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
 204  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
 205  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
 206    the palette size is the same.</li>
 207  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
 208  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
 209  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
 210  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
 211    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
 212
 213 </ul>
 214
 215 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
 216 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
 217 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
 218
 219       </div>
 220       <div class="tags">
 221
 222
 223         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
 224
 225
 226       </div>
 227     </div>
 228     <div class="padding"></div>
 229
 230     <div class="entry">
 231       <div class="title">
 232         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
 233       </div>
 234       <div class="date">
 235         26th September 2014
 236       </div>
 237       <div class="body">
 238         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 239 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
 240 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
 241 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
 242 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
 243 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
 244 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
 245 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
 246 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
 247 future.  The
 248 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
 249 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
 250 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
 251 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
 252 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
 253
 254 <p>First, download the test ISO via
 255 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
 256 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
 257 or rsync (use
 258 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
 259 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
 260 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
 261 install with some tweaking.</p>
 262
 263 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
 264 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
 265
 266 <p><blockquote><pre>
 267 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
 268 </pre></blockquote></p>
 269
 270 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
 271 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
 272 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
 273 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
 274
 275 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
 276 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
 277 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
 278 your need.</p>
 279
 280 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
 281 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
 282 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
 283 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
 284 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
 285 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
 286 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
 287 days.</p>
 288
 289 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
 290 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
 291 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
 292 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
 293 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
 294 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
 295 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
 296 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
 297 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
 298
 299 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
 300 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
 301 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
 302
 303       </div>
 304       <div class="tags">
 305
 306
 307         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>.
 308
 309
 310       </div>
 311     </div>
 312     <div class="padding"></div>
 313
 314     <div class="entry">
 315       <div class="title">
 316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
 317       </div>
 318       <div class="date">
 319         25th September 2014
 320       </div>
 321       <div class="body">
 322         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
 323 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
 324 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
 325 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
 326 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
 327 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
 328 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
 329 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
 330 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
 331 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
 332 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
 333 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
 334 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
 335
 336 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
 337 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
 338 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
 339 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
 340 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
 341 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
 342 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
 343 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
 344 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
 345 list</a>. :)</p>
 346
 347       </div>
 348       <div class="tags">
 349
 350
 351         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
 352
 353
 354       </div>
 355     </div>
 356     <div class="padding"></div>
 357
 358     <div class="entry">
 359       <div class="title">
 360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
 361       </div>
 362       <div class="date">
 363         16th September 2014
 364       </div>
 365       <div class="body">
 366         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
 367 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
 368 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
 369 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
 370 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
 371 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
 372 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
 373 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
 374 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
 375 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
 376 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
 377 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
 378 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
 379 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
 380
 381 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
 382 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
 383 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
 384 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
 385 depend on the small and clever package
 386 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
 387 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
 388 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
 389 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
 390 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
 391 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
 392 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
 393 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
 394 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
 395 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
 396 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
 397
 398 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
 399 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
 400 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
 401 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
 402 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
 403 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
 404 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
 405 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
 406 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
 407 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
 408 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
 409 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
 410 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
 411 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
 412 dialog.</p>
 413
 414 <p><table>
 415
 416 <tr>
 417 <th>Machine/setup</th>
 418 <th>Original tasksel</th>
 419 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
 420 <th>Reduction</th>
 421 </tr>
 422
 423 <tr>
 424 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
 425 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
 426 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
 427 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
 428 </tr>
 429
 430 <tr>
 431 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
 432 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
 433 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
 434 <td>23 min 40%</td>
 435 </tr>
 436
 437 <tr>
 438 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
 439 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
 440 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
 441 <td>11 min 50%</td>
 442 </tr>
 443
 444 <tr>
 445 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
 446 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
 447 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
 448 <td>2 min 33%</td>
 449 </tr>
 450
 451 <tr>
 452 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
 453 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
 454 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
 455 <td>4 min 21%</td>
 456 </tr>
 457
 458 </table></p>
 459
 460 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
 461 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
 462 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
 463 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
 464 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
 465 installed.</p>
 466
 467 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
 468 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
 469 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
 470 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
 471 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
 472 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
 473 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
 474 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
 475 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
 476 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
 477 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
 478 for the entire installation.</p>
 479
 480 <p>I've implemented this in the
 481 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
 482 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
 483 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
 484 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
 485 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
 486
 487 <p><blockquote><pre>
 488 #!/bin/sh
 489 set -e
 490 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 491 info() {
 492     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
 493 }
 494 error() {
 495     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
 496 }
 497 override_install() {
 498     apt-install eatmydata || true
 499     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
 500         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 501             file=/usr/bin/$bin
 502             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
 503             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
 504                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
 505                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
 506                     > /target$file.edu
 507                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
 508                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 509                     --rename --quiet --add $file
 510                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
 511             else
 512                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
 513             fi
 514         done
 515     else
 516         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
 517     fi
 518 }
 519
 520 override_install
 521 </pre></blockquote></p>
 522
 523 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
 524 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
 525
 526 <p><blockquote><pre>
 527 #! /bin/sh -e
 528 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 529 error() {
 530     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
 531 }
 532 remove_install_override() {
 533     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 534         file=/usr/bin/$bin
 535         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
 536             rm /target$file
 537             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 538                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
 539             rm /target$file.edu
 540         else
 541             error "Missing divert for $file."
 542         fi
 543     done
 544     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
 545 }
 546
 547 remove_install_override
 548 </pre></blockquote></p>
 549
 550 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
 551 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
 552 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
 553
 554 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
 555 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
 556 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
 557 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
 558 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
 559 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
 560 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
 561 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
 562 everyone.</p>
 563
 564 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
 565 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
 566 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
 567 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
 568
 569 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
 570 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
 571 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
 572 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
 573 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
 574
 575       </div>
 576       <div class="tags">
 577
 578
 579         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>.
 580
 581
 582       </div>
 583     </div>
 584     <div class="padding"></div>
 585
 586     <div class="entry">
 587       <div class="title">
 588         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
 589       </div>
 590       <div class="date">
 591         10th September 2014
 592       </div>
 593       <div class="body">
 594         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
 595 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
 596 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
 597 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
 598 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
 599 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
 600 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
 601 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
 602 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
 603 those problems are gone now.</p>
 604
 605 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
 606 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
 607 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
 608 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
 609 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
 610
 611 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
 612 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
 613 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
 614
 615 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
 616 line:</p>
 617
 618 <p><blockquote><pre>
 619 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
 620 </pre></blockquote></p>
 621
 622 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
 623 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
 624 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
 625 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
 626
 627 <p><blockquote><pre>
 628 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
 629 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
 630 %
 631 </pre></blockquote></p>
 632
 633 <p>Now if only
 634 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
 635 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
 636 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
 637 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
 638 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
 639 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
 640 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
 641 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
 642 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
 643
 644       </div>
 645       <div class="tags">
 646
 647
 648         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 649
 650
 651       </div>
 652     </div>
 653     <div class="padding"></div>
 654
 655     <div class="entry">
 656       <div class="title">
 657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
 658       </div>
 659       <div class="date">
 660         25th August 2014
 661       </div>
 662       <div class="body">
 663         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
 664 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
 665 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
 666 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
 667 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
 668 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
 669 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
 670 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
 671 am not sure.
 672 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
 673 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
 674 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
 675 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
 676 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
 677 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
 678 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
 679 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
 680 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
 681 licenses are.</p>
 682
 683 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
 684 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
 685 end user</a>
 686 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
 687 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
 688
 689 <p><blockquote>
 690 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
 691 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
 692
 693 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
 694 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
 695 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
 696 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
 697 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
 698 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
 699 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
 700 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
 701 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
 702 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
 703 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
 704 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
 705 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
 706 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
 707 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
 708 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
 709 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
 710 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
 711
 712 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
 713 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
 714
 715 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
 716 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
 717 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
 718 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
 719 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
 720 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
 721 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
 722 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
 723 </blockquote></p>
 724
 725 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
 726 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
 727
 728 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
 729 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
 730
 731 <p><blockquote>
 732
 733 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
 734 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
 735 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
 736 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
 737 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
 738 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
 739 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
 740 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
 741 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
 742 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
 743 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
 744 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
 745
 746 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
 747 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
 748 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
 749 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
 750 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
 751 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
 752 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
 753 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
 754 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
 755 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
 756 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
 757 additional details.</p>
 758
 759 </blockquote></p>
 760
 761 <p>Some free software like
 762 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
 763 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
 764 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
 765 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
 766
 767       </div>
 768       <div class="tags">
 769
 770
 771         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 772
 773
 774       </div>
 775     </div>
 776     <div class="padding"></div>
 777
 778     <div class="entry">
 779       <div class="title">
 780         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
 781       </div>
 782       <div class="date">
 783         31st July 2014
 784       </div>
 785       <div class="body">
 786         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
 787 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 788 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
 789 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
 790 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
 791 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
 792
 793 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 794
 795 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
 796 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
 797 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
 798 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
 799 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
 800 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
 801 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
 802 works with Windows . :-(</p>
 803
 804 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
 805 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
 806 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
 807 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
 808 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
 809 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
 810
 811 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 812 project?</strong></p>
 813
 814 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
 815 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
 816 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
 817 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
 818 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
 819 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
 820 with this job.</p>
 821
 822 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 823 Edu?</strong></p>
 824
 825 <p>The independence.</p>
 826
 827 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
 828 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
 829 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
 830
 831 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
 832 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
 833 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
 834 working reliable. </p>
 835
 836 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
 837 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
 838 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
 839 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
 840 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
 841 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
 842 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
 843 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
 844
 845 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 846 Edu?</strong></p>
 847
 848 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
 849 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
 850 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
 851
 852 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 853
 854 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
 855 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
 856
 857 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 858 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 859
 860 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
 861 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
 862 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
 863 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
 864 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
 865 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
 866 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
 867
 868       </div>
 869       <div class="tags">
 870
 871
 872         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 873
 874
 875       </div>
 876     </div>
 877     <div class="padding"></div>
 878
 879     <div class="entry">
 880       <div class="title">
 881         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
 882       </div>
 883       <div class="date">
 884         23rd July 2014
 885       </div>
 886       <div class="body">
 887         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
 888 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
 889 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
 890 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
 891 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
 892 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
 893 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
 894 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
 895 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
 896 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
 897 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
 898 the translation show this very well:</p>
 899
 900 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
 901
 902 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
 903 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 904 project pages and the
 905 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
 906 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 907 and HTML version available in the
 908 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
 909 directory</a>.</p>
 910
 911 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
 912 you find any.</p>
 913
 914       </div>
 915       <div class="tags">
 916
 917
 918         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 919
 920
 921       </div>
 922     </div>
 923     <div class="padding"></div>
 924
 925     <div class="entry">
 926       <div class="title">
 927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
 928       </div>
 929       <div class="date">
 930         17th June 2014
 931       </div>
 932       <div class="body">
 933         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 934 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
 935 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
 936 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
 937 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
 938
 939 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
 940 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
 941 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
 942 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
 943 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
 944 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
 945 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
 946 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
 947 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
 948 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
 949 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
 950 goals.</p>
 951
 952 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
 953 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
 954 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
 955 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
 956 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
 957 chapters together into one large web page (aka
 958 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
 959 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
 960 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
 961 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
 962 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
 963 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
 964 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
 965 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
 966 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
 967 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
 968 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
 969 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
 970 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
 971 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
 972 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
 973 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
 974 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
 975 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
 976
 977 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
 978 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
 979 track the English original.  For this we use the
 980 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
 981 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
 982 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
 983 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
 984 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
 985 files), which the translations update with the native language
 986 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
 987 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
 988 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
 989 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
 990 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
 991 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
 992 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
 993 of the documentation.</p>
 994
 995 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
 996 recommend using
 997 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
 998 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
 999 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1000 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1001 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1002 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1003 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1004 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1005
1006 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1007 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1008 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1009 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1010 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1011 translated images by storing translated versions in
1012 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1013 package maintainers know more.</p>
1014
1015 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1016 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1017 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
1018 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1019 PDF version</a> or the
1020 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1021 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1022 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
1023
1024 <p>To learn more, check out
1025 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1026 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
1027 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1028 manual on the wiki</a> and
1029 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1030 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
1031
1032       </div>
1033       <div class="tags">
1034
1035
1036         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1037
1038
1039       </div>
1040     </div>
1041     <div class="padding"></div>
1042
1043     <div class="entry">
1044       <div class="title">
1045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
1046       </div>
1047       <div class="date">
1048         29th May 2014
1049       </div>
1050       <div class="body">
1051         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
1052 in my car, connected to
1053 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
1054 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
1055 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
1056 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
1057 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
1058 such car computer.</p>
1059
1060 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
1061
1062 <ul>
1063
1064  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
1065
1066  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
1067    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
1068    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
1069    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
1070    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
1071
1072  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
1073    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
1074    route.</li>
1075
1076  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
1077
1078  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
1079    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
1080    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
1081    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
1082    connection do not work.</li>
1083
1084  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
1085    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
1086
1087  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
1088    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
1089
1090  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
1091    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
1092
1093 </ul>
1094
1095 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
1096 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
1097
1098       </div>
1099       <div class="tags">
1100
1101
1102         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1103
1104
1105       </div>
1106     </div>
1107     <div class="padding"></div>
1108
1109     <div class="entry">
1110       <div class="title">
1111         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
1112       </div>
1113       <div class="date">
1114         29th April 2014
1115       </div>
1116       <div class="body">
1117         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
1118 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
1119 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
1120 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
1121 newer AVM2 format - see
1122 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
1123 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
1124 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
1125 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
1126 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
1127 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
1128 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
1129 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
1130 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
1131 sites do not work yet.</p>
1132
1133 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
1134 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
1135 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
1136 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
1137 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
1138 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
1139 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
1140 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
1141 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
1142 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
1143 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
1144
1145 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
1146 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
1147 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
1148 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
1149 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
1150 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
1151 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
1152
1153 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
1154 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
1155 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
1156 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
1157 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
1158
1159       </div>
1160       <div class="tags">
1161
1162
1163         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1164
1165
1166       </div>
1167     </div>
1168     <div class="padding"></div>
1169
1170     <div class="entry">
1171       <div class="title">
1172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
1173       </div>
1174       <div class="date">
1175         23rd April 2014
1176       </div>
1177       <div class="body">
1178         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
1179 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
1180 So I implemented one, using
1181 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
1182 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
1183 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
1184 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
1185 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
1186 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
1187
1188 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
1189 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
1190 packages to install.  The first part is in
1191 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
1192 this:</p>
1193
1194 <p><blockquote><pre>
1195 Task: isenkram
1196 Section: hardware
1197 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1198  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1199  proposed.
1200 Test-new-install: mark show
1201 Relevance: 8
1202 Packages: for-current-hardware
1203 </pre></blockquote></p>
1204
1205 <p>The second part is in
1206 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
1207 this:</p>
1208
1209 <p><blockquote><pre>
1210 #!/bin/sh
1211 #
1212 (
1213     isenkram-lookup
1214     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1215 ) | sort -u
1216 </pre></blockquote></p>
1217
1218 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
1219 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
1220 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
1221 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
1222 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
1223 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
1224
1225 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
1226 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
1227 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
1228 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
1229 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
1230 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
1231 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
1232 the python-apt code (bug
1233 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
1234 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
1235 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
1236 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
1237 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
1238 unstable today.</p>
1239
1240 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1241 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1242 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
1243 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1244 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
1245 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
1246 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
1247 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1248 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
1249
1250 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1251 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
1252 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
1253 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1254 package.  See also
1255 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
1256 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
1257 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1258 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
1259
1260       </div>
1261       <div class="tags">
1262
1263
1264         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1265
1266
1267       </div>
1268     </div>
1269     <div class="padding"></div>
1270
1271     <div class="entry">
1272       <div class="title">
1273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
1274       </div>
1275       <div class="date">
1276         15th April 2014
1277       </div>
1278       <div class="body">
1279         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1280 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1281 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1282 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1283 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
1284 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
1285
1286 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1287 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
1288 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1289 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
1290 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1291 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1292 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
1293
1294 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1295 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
1296 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
1297 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
1298 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
1299 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
1300 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
1301 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
1302 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
1303 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
1304 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
1305 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
1306
1307 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1308 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1309 become root:</p>
1310
1311 <p><pre>
1312 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1313   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1314   u-boot-tools
1315 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1316   freedom-maker
1317 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1318 </pre></p>
1319
1320 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1321 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1322 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
1323 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1324 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1325 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
1326 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1327 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
1328
1329 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1330 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1331 the preseed values:</p>
1332
1333 <p><pre>
1334 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1335 </pre></p>
1336
1337 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1338 it still work.</p>
1339
1340 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1341 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
1342 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
1343 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1344 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
1345 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1346 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
1347
1348 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1349 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1350 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1351 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1352 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1353 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1354
1355       </div>
1356       <div class="tags">
1357
1358
1359         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1360
1361
1362       </div>
1363     </div>
1364     <div class="padding"></div>
1365
1366     <div class="entry">
1367       <div class="title">
1368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
1369       </div>
1370       <div class="date">
1371          9th April 2014
1372       </div>
1373       <div class="body">
1374         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1375 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
1376 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1377 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1378 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1379 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1380 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1381 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
1382 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1383 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
1384 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
1385 have looked at a system called
1386 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
1387 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
1388
1389 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1390 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1391 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
1392 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1393 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
1394 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1395 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1396 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1397 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
1398 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
1399 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1400 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1401 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
1402
1403 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1404 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
1405 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
1406 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1407 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
1408 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
1409 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1410 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1411 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
1412 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
1413 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1414 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1415 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
1416 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1417 account.</p>
1418
1419 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
1420 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
1421 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
1422 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
1423 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
1424 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
1425 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
1426
1427 <p><blockquote><pre>
1428 [s3c]
1429 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1430 backend-login: API-login
1431 backend-password: API-password
1432 fs-passphrase: local-password
1433 </pre></blockquote></p>
1434
1435 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
1436 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
1437 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
1438 details and password to create it:</p>
1439
1440 <p><blockquote><pre>
1441 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
1442 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1443   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1444 Enter backend login:
1445 Enter backend password:
1446 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
1447 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
1448 Enter encryption password:
1449 Confirm encryption password:
1450 Generating random encryption key...
1451 Creating metadata tables...
1452 Dumping metadata...
1453 ..objects..
1454 ..blocks..
1455 ..inodes..
1456 ..inode_blocks..
1457 ..symlink_targets..
1458 ..names..
1459 ..contents..
1460 ..ext_attributes..
1461 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1462 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
1463 # </pre></blockquote></p>
1464
1465 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
1466
1467 <p><blockquote><pre>
1468 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1469   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1470 Using 4 upload threads.
1471 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
1472 Reading metadata...
1473 ..objects..
1474 ..blocks..
1475 ..inodes..
1476 ..inode_blocks..
1477 ..symlink_targets..
1478 ..names..
1479 ..contents..
1480 ..ext_attributes..
1481 Mounting filesystem...
1482 # df -h /s3ql
1483 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1484 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
1485 #
1486 </pre></blockquote></p>
1487
1488 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
1489 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
1490 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
1491 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
1492 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
1493 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
1494
1495 <p><blockquote><pre>
1496 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
1497 #
1498 </pre></blockquote></p>
1499
1500 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
1501 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
1502 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
1503 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
1504 file system:</p>
1505
1506 <p><blockquote><pre>
1507 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1508 Using cached metadata.
1509 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
1510 Checking DB integrity...
1511 Creating temporary extra indices...
1512 Checking lost+found...
1513 Checking cached objects...
1514 Checking names (refcounts)...
1515 Checking contents (names)...
1516 Checking contents (inodes)...
1517 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
1518 Checking objects (reference counts)...
1519 Checking objects (backend)...
1520 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
1521 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
1522 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
1523 Checking objects (sizes)...
1524 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1525 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1526 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1527 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1528 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1529 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1530 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1531 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1532 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1533 Checking directory reachability...
1534 Checking unix conventions...
1535 Checking referential integrity...
1536 Dropping temporary indices...
1537 Backing up old metadata...
1538 Dumping metadata...
1539 ..objects..
1540 ..blocks..
1541 ..inodes..
1542 ..inode_blocks..
1543 ..symlink_targets..
1544 ..names..
1545 ..contents..
1546 ..ext_attributes..
1547 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1548 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1549 #
1550 </pre></blockquote></p>
1551
1552 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1553 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
1554 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1555 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
1556 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1557 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1558 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
1559 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
1560 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1561 working set.</p>
1562
1563 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1564 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
1565 busy:</p>
1566
1567 <p><blockquote><pre>
1568 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1569   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1570 Using 8 upload threads.
1571 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
1572 #
1573 </pre></blockquote></p>
1574
1575 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
1576 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
1577 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
1578 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
1579 s3qlctrl:
1580
1581 <p><blockquote><pre>
1582 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
1583 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
1584 #
1585 </pre></blockquote></p>
1586
1587 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
1588 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
1589 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
1590 a report:</p>
1591
1592 <p><blockquote><pre>
1593 # s3qlstat /s3ql
1594 Directory entries:    9141
1595 Inodes:               9143
1596 Data blocks:          8851
1597 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
1598 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
1599 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
1600 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
1601 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
1602 #
1603 </pre></blockquote></p>
1604
1605 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
1606 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
1607 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
1608 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
1609 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
1610 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
1611 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
1612 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
1613 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
1614 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
1615 best.</p>
1616
1617 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
1618 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
1619 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
1620 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
1621 poster is titled
1622 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
1623 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
1624 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
1625 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
1626 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
1627
1628 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
1629 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
1630 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
1631 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
1632 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
1633 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
1634 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
1635 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
1636
1637 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
1638 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
1639 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
1640 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
1641 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
1642 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
1643 only read from it.</p>
1644
1645 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1646 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1647 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1648
1649       </div>
1650       <div class="tags">
1651
1652
1653         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1654
1655
1656       </div>
1657     </div>
1658     <div class="padding"></div>
1659
1660     <div class="entry">
1661       <div class="title">
1662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
1663       </div>
1664       <div class="date">
1665          1st April 2014
1666       </div>
1667       <div class="body">
1668         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
1669 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
1670 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
1671 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
1672 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
1673 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
1674 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
1675 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
1676 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
1677 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
1678 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
1679 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
1680 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
1681
1682 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
1683 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
1684 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
1685 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
1686 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
1687 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
1688 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
1689 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
1690 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
1691 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
1692 Linux.</p>
1693
1694 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
1695 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
1696 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
1697 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
1698 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
1699 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
1700 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
1701 Windows before metro).</p>
1702
1703 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
1704 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
1705 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
1706 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
1707 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
1708 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
1709 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
1710 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
1711 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
1712 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
1713 old Windows binaries, check it out by
1714 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
1715 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
1716 image.</p>
1717
1718       </div>
1719       <div class="tags">
1720
1721
1722         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
1723
1724
1725       </div>
1726     </div>
1727     <div class="padding"></div>
1728
1729     <div class="entry">
1730       <div class="title">
1731         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
1732       </div>
1733       <div class="date">
1734         30th March 2014
1735       </div>
1736       <div class="body">
1737         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
1738 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
1739 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
1740 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
1741 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
1742
1743 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1744
1745 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
1746 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
1747 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
1748 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
1749 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
1750
1751 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
1752 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
1753 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
1754
1755 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
1756 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
1757 hunger.</p>
1758
1759 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1760 project?</strong></p>
1761
1762 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
1763 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
1764 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
1765 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
1766 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
1767 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
1768 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
1769 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
1770 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
1771 running.  I just loved it.</p>
1772
1773 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1774 Edu?</strong></p>
1775
1776 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
1777 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
1778 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
1779 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
1780 be made of steel.</p>
1781
1782 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1783 Edu?</strong></p>
1784
1785 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
1786
1787 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
1788 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
1789 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
1790 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
1791 or dropped.</p>
1792
1793 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
1794 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
1795 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
1796 discourage many people too.</p>
1797
1798 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1799
1800 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
1801 Virtualbox.</p>
1802
1803
1804 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1805 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1806
1807 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
1808 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
1809 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
1810 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
1811 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
1812 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
1813 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
1814 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
1815 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
1816
1817       </div>
1818       <div class="tags">
1819
1820
1821         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1822
1823
1824       </div>
1825     </div>
1826     <div class="padding"></div>
1827
1828     <div class="entry">
1829       <div class="title">
1830         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
1831       </div>
1832       <div class="date">
1833         25th March 2014
1834       </div>
1835       <div class="body">
1836         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
1837 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
1838 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
1839 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
1840 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
1841 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
1842 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
1843 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
1844 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
1845
1846 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
1847 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
1848 looked a given way.  Such
1849 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
1850 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
1851 called a
1852 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
1853 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
1854 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
1855 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
1856 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
1857 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
1858 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
1859 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
1860 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
1861 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
1862 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
1863 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
1864 There are several commercial services around providing such
1865 timestamping.  A quick search for
1866 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
1867 service</a>" pointed me to at least
1868 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
1869 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
1870 Vadis</a>,
1871 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
1872 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
1873 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
1874 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
1875
1876 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
1877 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
1878 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
1879 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
1880 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
1881 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
1882 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
1883 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
1884 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
1885 Greifswald.</p>
1886
1887 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
1888 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
1889 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
1890 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
1891 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
1892
1893 <p><blockquote><pre>
1894 #!/bin/sh
1895 set -e
1896 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
1897 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
1898 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
1899 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
1900 cafile=chain.txt
1901 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
1902     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
1903 fi
1904 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
1905     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
1906 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
1907 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
1908 base64 < "$resfile"
1909 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
1910 </pre></blockquote></p>
1911
1912 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
1913 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
1914 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
1915 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
1916 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
1917 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
1918 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
1919 changed.</p>
1920
1921 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
1922 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
1923 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
1924 to set up?</p>
1925
1926       </div>
1927       <div class="tags">
1928
1929
1930         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1931
1932
1933       </div>
1934     </div>
1935     <div class="padding"></div>
1936
1937     <div class="entry">
1938       <div class="title">
1939         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
1940       </div>
1941       <div class="date">
1942         21st March 2014
1943       </div>
1944       <div class="body">
1945         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
1946 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
1947 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
1948 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
1949 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
1950 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
1951 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
1952
1953 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
1954 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
1955 tried using
1956 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
1957 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
1958 and program
1959 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
1960 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
1961 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
1962 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
1963 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
1964 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
1965 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
1966 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
1967 this method.</p>
1968
1969 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
1970 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
1971 problem is
1972 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
1973 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
1974 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
1975 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
1976 DVD structures, as the python library
1977 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
1978 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
1979 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
1980 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
1981 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
1982 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
1983
1984 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
1985 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
1986
1987       </div>
1988       <div class="tags">
1989
1990
1991         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1992
1993
1994       </div>
1995     </div>
1996     <div class="padding"></div>
1997
1998     <div class="entry">
1999       <div class="title">
2000         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
2001       </div>
2002       <div class="date">
2003         14th March 2014
2004       </div>
2005       <div class="body">
2006         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2007 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2008 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2009 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2010 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2011 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2012 release (0.2).</p>
2013
2014 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2015 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2016 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2017 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2018 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2019 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2020 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2021 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2022 and build using
2023 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2024 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2025
2026 <pre>
2027 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2028   freedom-maker
2029 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2030   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2031   u-boot-tools
2032 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2033 </pre>
2034
2035 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2036 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2037 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2038 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2039 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2040 kpartx call.</p>
2041
2042 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2043 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2044 the preseed values:</p>
2045
2046 <pre>
2047 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2048 </pre>
2049
2050 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2051 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
2052 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2053 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2054 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2055 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
2056
2057 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2058 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2059 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2060 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2061 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2062 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2063
2064       </div>
2065       <div class="tags">
2066
2067
2068         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2069
2070
2071       </div>
2072     </div>
2073     <div class="padding"></div>
2074
2075     <div class="entry">
2076       <div class="title">
2077         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2078       </div>
2079       <div class="date">
2080         12th March 2014
2081       </div>
2082       <div class="body">
2083         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
2084 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
2085 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
2086 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
2087 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
2088 document this better when one of the customers of
2089 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
2090 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
2091 get this working are the following:</p>
2092
2093 <p><ol>
2094
2095 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
2096 example host here.</li>
2097
2098 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
2099 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
2100
2101 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
2102 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
2103
2104 </ol></p>
2105
2106 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
2107 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
2108 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
2109 started).</p>
2110
2111 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
2112 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
2113
2114 <p><blockquote><pre>
2115 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
2116 Export list for nas-server:
2117 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
2118 root@tjener:~#
2119 </pre></blockquote></p>
2120
2121 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
2122 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
2123 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
2124 NFS access.</p>
2125
2126 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
2127 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
2128 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
2129
2130 <p><blockquote><pre>
2131 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2132 </pre></blockquote></p>
2133
2134 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
2135 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
2136 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
2137 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
2138
2139 <p><blockquote><pre>
2140 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2141 objectClass: automount
2142 cn: nas-server
2143 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2144
2145 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2146 objectClass: top
2147 objectClass: automountMap
2148 ou: auto.nas-server
2149
2150 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2151 objectClass: automount
2152 cn: /
2153 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
2154 </pre></blockquote></p>
2155
2156 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
2157 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
2158 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
2159
2160 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
2161 the storage server directly by just visiting the
2162 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
2163 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
2164
2165       </div>
2166       <div class="tags">
2167
2168
2169         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
2170
2171
2172       </div>
2173     </div>
2174     <div class="padding"></div>
2175
2176     <div class="entry">
2177       <div class="title">
2178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
2179       </div>
2180       <div class="date">
2181         22nd February 2014
2182       </div>
2183       <div class="body">
2184         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2185 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2186 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
2187 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
2188 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2189 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2190 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2191 proper home since then.</p>
2192
2193 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2194 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2195 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
2196 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
2197 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
2198
2199 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2200 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2201 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
2202 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
2203 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2204 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
2205 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
2206 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
2207 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
2208
2209       </div>
2210       <div class="tags">
2211
2212
2213         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>.
2214
2215
2216       </div>
2217     </div>
2218     <div class="padding"></div>
2219
2220     <div class="entry">
2221       <div class="title">
2222         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
2223       </div>
2224       <div class="date">
2225          3rd February 2014
2226       </div>
2227       <div class="body">
2228         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2229 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2230 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
2231 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
2232 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
2233 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
2234 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2235 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
2236 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
2237
2238 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2239 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
2240 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
2241 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
2242 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2243 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
2244
2245 <p><blockquote><pre>
2246 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2247 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
2248 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
2249 dhclient /dev/eth0
2250 </pre></blockquote></p>
2251
2252 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2253 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2254 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
2255
2256 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2257 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2258 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2259 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2260 side.</p>
2261
2262 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2263 stuff:</p>
2264
2265 <p><blockquote><pre>
2266 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2267 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2268 EOF
2269 apt-get update
2270 apt-get dist-upgrade
2271 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2272     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2273 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2274 </pre></blockquote></p>
2275
2276 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2277 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
2278 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2279 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2280 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2281 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2282 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2283 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2284 ssh instead.
2285
2286 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2287 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2288 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2289 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2290 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2291 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
2292
2293 <p><blockquote><pre>
2294 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2295 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2296 EOF
2297 </pre></blockquote></p>
2298
2299 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2300 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2301 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2302 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2303
2304 <p><blockquote><pre>
2305 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2306 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2307 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2308 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2309 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2310 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2311 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2312 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2313 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2314 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2315 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2316 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2317 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2318 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2319 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2320 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2321 #
2322 </pre></blockquote></p>
2323
2324 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2325 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2326 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
2327 command line stuff.<p>
2328
2329       </div>
2330       <div class="tags">
2331
2332
2333         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>.
2334
2335
2336       </div>
2337     </div>
2338     <div class="padding"></div>
2339
2340     <div class="entry">
2341       <div class="title">
2342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
2343       </div>
2344       <div class="date">
2345         29th January 2014
2346       </div>
2347       <div class="body">
2348         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
2349 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
2350 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
2351 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
2352 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
2353 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
2354 investigated in
2355 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
2356 from December 2013, in the article
2357 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
2358 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
2359 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
2360 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
2361 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
2362 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
2363 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
2364 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
2365
2366 <p><blockquote>
2367 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
2368 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
2369 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
2370 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
2371 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
2372 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
2373 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
2374 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
2375 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
2376 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
2377 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
2378 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
2379
2380 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
2381 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
2382 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
2383 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
2384 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
2385 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
2386 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
2387 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
2388 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
2389 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
2390 </blockquote><p>
2391
2392 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
2393 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
2394 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
2395 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
2396 summarized like this:</p>
2397
2398 <p><blockquote>
2399 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
2400 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
2401 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
2402 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
2403 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
2404 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
2405 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
2406 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
2407 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
2408 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
2409 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
2410 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
2411 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
2412 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
2413 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
2414 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
2415 </blockquote></p>
2416
2417 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
2418 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
2419 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
2420 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
2421
2422 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2423 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2424 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2425
2426       </div>
2427       <div class="tags">
2428
2429
2430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2431
2432
2433       </div>
2434     </div>
2435     <div class="padding"></div>
2436
2437     <div class="entry">
2438       <div class="title">
2439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
2440       </div>
2441       <div class="date">
2442         14th January 2014
2443       </div>
2444       <div class="body">
2445         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
2446 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2447 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2448 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2449 the source.  The company behind it provide
2450 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
2451 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2452 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2453 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2454 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
2455 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
2456 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
2457 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2458 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
2459 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
2460 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
2461 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2462 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2463 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2464 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2465 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
2466 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2467 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
2468 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
2469
2470 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
2471
2472 <ul>
2473
2474   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
2475   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
2476   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
2477
2478 </ul>
2479
2480 <p>You can
2481 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2482 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2483 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2484 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2485 include a test suite check.</p>
2486
2487       </div>
2488       <div class="tags">
2489
2490
2491         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2492
2493
2494       </div>
2495     </div>
2496     <div class="padding"></div>
2497
2498     <div class="entry">
2499       <div class="title">
2500         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
2501       </div>
2502       <div class="date">
2503         25th December 2013
2504       </div>
2505       <div class="body">
2506         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2507 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
2508 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
2509 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
2510 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
2511 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
2512 George</a>.</p>
2513
2514 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
2515
2516 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2517
2518 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
2519 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
2520 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
2521 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
2522 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
2523 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
2524
2525 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
2526 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
2527 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
2528 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
2529 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
2530 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
2531 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
2532 to help building another school's informational education concept from
2533 scratch.</p>
2534
2535 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
2536 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
2537 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
2538
2539 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
2540 and cycling.</p>
2541
2542 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2543 project?</strong></p>
2544
2545 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
2546 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
2547 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
2548 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
2549 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
2550 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
2551
2552 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
2553 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
2554 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
2555 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
2556 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
2557 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
2558 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
2559 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
2560 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
2561
2562 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
2563 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
2564 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
2565 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
2566
2567 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2568 Edu?</strong></p>
2569
2570 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
2571 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
2572 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
2573 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
2574 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
2575 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
2576 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
2577 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
2578 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
2579 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
2580 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
2581 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
2582 that it rocks!</p>
2583
2584 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
2585 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
2586 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
2587 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
2588 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
2589 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
2590 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
2591
2592 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2593 Edu?</strong></p>
2594
2595 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
2596 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
2597 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
2598 can list a few points about that:</p>
2599
2600 <ul>
2601
2602  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
2603  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
2604  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
2605
2606 </ul>
2607
2608 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
2609
2610 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2611
2612 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
2613 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
2614 year.</p>
2615
2616 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
2617 run text tools. I use
2618 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
2619 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
2620 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
2621 based full-featured student management software with the two),
2622 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
2623 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
2624 coloured world called the WWW, I use
2625 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
2626 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
2627 e-mail.</p>
2628
2629 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
2630 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
2631 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
2632 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
2633 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
2634 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
2635 Facebook now ;).</p>
2636
2637 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2638 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2639
2640 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
2641 side is what I have experienced.</p>
2642
2643 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
2644 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
2645 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
2646 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
2647 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
2648 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
2649 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
2650 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
2651 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
2652 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
2653 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
2654 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
2655 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
2656 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
2657 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
2658 plain criminal.</p>
2659
2660 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
2661 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
2662 founded an association named
2663 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
2664 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
2665 area of free and open source software, for example the
2666 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
2667 Teckids and are the youth programme of
2668 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
2669 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
2670 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
2671 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
2672 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
2673 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
2674
2675 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
2676 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
2677 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
2678 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
2679 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
2680 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
2681 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
2682 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
2683 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
2684 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
2685 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
2686 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
2687
2688 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
2689 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
2690 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
2691 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
2692
2693 <!--
2694
2695 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
2696
2697 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
2698 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
2699
2700  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
2701    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
2702    of the decision makers above;
2703  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
2704    knowledge about free software
2705
2706 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
2707
2708 -->
2709
2710       </div>
2711       <div class="tags">
2712
2713
2714         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2715
2716
2717       </div>
2718     </div>
2719     <div class="padding"></div>
2720
2721     <div class="entry">
2722       <div class="title">
2723         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
2724       </div>
2725       <div class="date">
2726          6th December 2013
2727       </div>
2728       <div class="body">
2729         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
2730 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2731 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
2732 had a new school administrator show up on
2733 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
2734 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
2735 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
2736 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
2737 Germany a few years ago.</p>
2738
2739 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2740
2741 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
2742 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
2743 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
2744 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
2745
2746 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
2747 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
2748 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
2749 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
2750 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
2751 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
2752 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
2753 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
2754 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
2755
2756 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2757 project?</strong></p>
2758
2759 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
2760 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
2761 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
2762 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
2763
2764 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2765 Edu?</strong></p>
2766
2767 <ul>
2768   <li>Quick installation,</li>
2769   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
2770   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
2771   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
2772     single company,</li>
2773   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
2774     experience and problem solutions.</li>
2775 </ul>
2776
2777 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2778 Edu?</strong></p>
2779
2780 <ul>
2781   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
2782   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
2783   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
2784   working again reliably.
2785
2786   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
2787   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
2788   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
2789   as their base.
2790
2791   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
2792   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
2793   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
2794   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
2795   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
2796   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
2797
2798   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
2799   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
2800   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
2801   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
2802   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
2803   schemes.</li>
2804
2805   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
2806   compared to Debian.</li>
2807
2808 </ul>
2809
2810 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
2811 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
2812 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
2813 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
2814
2815 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2816
2817 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
2818 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
2819 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
2820 programming languages for teaching.</p>
2821
2822 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2823 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2824
2825 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
2826
2827 <ul>
2828
2829   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
2830     teaching and learning.</li>
2831
2832   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
2833     home, and at their working place without running into license or
2834     conversion problems.</li>
2835
2836   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
2837     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
2838     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
2839     science, not products.</li>
2840
2841   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
2842     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
2843
2844 </ul>
2845
2846       </div>
2847       <div class="tags">
2848
2849
2850         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2851
2852
2853       </div>
2854     </div>
2855     <div class="padding"></div>
2856
2857     <div class="entry">
2858       <div class="title">
2859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
2860       </div>
2861       <div class="date">
2862         30th November 2013
2863       </div>
2864       <div class="body">
2865         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
2866 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
2867 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
2868 experiment with interesting network technology, the
2869 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
2870 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
2871 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
2872 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
2873 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
2874 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
2875 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
2876 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
2877 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
2878 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
2879 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
2880 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
2881 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
2882 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
2883 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
2884 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
2885
2886       </div>
2887       <div class="tags">
2888
2889
2890         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2891
2892
2893       </div>
2894     </div>
2895     <div class="padding"></div>
2896
2897     <div class="entry">
2898       <div class="title">
2899         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
2900       </div>
2901       <div class="date">
2902         24th November 2013
2903       </div>
2904       <div class="body">
2905         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2906 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2907 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2908 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2909 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
2910 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2911 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2912 is working on.  I checked the
2913 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
2914 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
2915 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
2916 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2917 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2918 These are the release notes:</p>
2919
2920 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
2921
2922 <ul>
2923
2924   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2925    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2926    up.</li>
2927
2928   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
2929
2930   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2931    Matthias Klose.</li>
2932
2933   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2934    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
2935
2936   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2937    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
2938    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
2939
2940 </ul>
2941
2942 <p>You can
2943 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2944 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2945 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2946 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2947 include a testsuite check.</p>
2948
2949       </div>
2950       <div class="tags">
2951
2952
2953         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2954
2955
2956       </div>
2957     </div>
2958     <div class="padding"></div>
2959
2960     <div class="entry">
2961       <div class="title">
2962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
2963       </div>
2964       <div class="date">
2965         21st November 2013
2966       </div>
2967       <div class="body">
2968         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
2969 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
2970 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
2971 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
2972 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
2973 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
2974 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
2975 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
2976 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
2977 TED talk
2978 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
2979 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
2980 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
2981
2982 <blockquote>
2983
2984 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
2985 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
2986 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
2987 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
2988 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
2989 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
2990 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
2991 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
2992 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
2993 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
2994 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
2995
2996 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
2997 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
2998 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
2999
3000 </blockquote>
3001
3002 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
3003 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
3004 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
3005 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
3006 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
3007 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
3008 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
3009 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
3010 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
3011
3012       </div>
3013       <div class="tags">
3014
3015
3016         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3017
3018
3019       </div>
3020     </div>
3021     <div class="padding"></div>
3022
3023     <div class="entry">
3024       <div class="title">
3025         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
3026       </div>
3027       <div class="date">
3028         13th November 2013
3029       </div>
3030       <div class="body">
3031         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
3032 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
3033 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
3034 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
3035 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
3036 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
3037 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
3038 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
3039 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
3040 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
3041 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
3042 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
3043 right away. :)</p>
3044
3045       </div>
3046       <div class="tags">
3047
3048
3049         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3050
3051
3052       </div>
3053     </div>
3054     <div class="padding"></div>
3055
3056     <div class="entry">
3057       <div class="title">
3058         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
3059       </div>
3060       <div class="date">
3061         10th November 2013
3062       </div>
3063       <div class="body">
3064         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
3065 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
3066 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
3067 MR3040 as a mesh node using
3068 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
3069
3070 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
3071 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
3072 and downloaded
3073 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
3074 recommended firmware image</a>
3075 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
3076 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
3077 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
3078 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
3079 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
3080
3081 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
3082 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
3083 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
3084 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
3085 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
3086 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
3087 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
3088 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
3089 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
3090 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
3091 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
3092 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
3093 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
3094
3095 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
3096 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
3097 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
3098 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
3099 them:</p>
3100
3101 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
3102
3103 <pre>
3104
3105 config interface 'loopback'
3106         option ifname 'lo'
3107         option proto 'static'
3108         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
3109         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
3110
3111 config globals 'globals'
3112         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
3113
3114 config interface 'lan'
3115         option ifname 'eth0'
3116         option type 'bridge'
3117         option proto 'dhcp'
3118         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
3119         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
3120         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
3121         option ip6assign '60'
3122
3123 config interface 'mesh'
3124         option ifname 'adhoc0'
3125         option mtu '1528'
3126         option proto 'batadv'
3127         option mesh 'bat0'
3128 </pre>
3129
3130 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
3131 <pre>
3132
3133 config wifi-device 'radio0'
3134         option type 'mac80211'
3135         option channel '11'
3136         option hwmode '11ng'
3137         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
3138         option htmode 'HT20'
3139         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
3140         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
3141         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
3142         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
3143         option disabled '0'
3144
3145 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
3146         option device 'radio0'
3147         option ifname 'adhoc0'
3148         option network 'mesh'
3149         option encryption 'none'
3150         option mode 'adhoc'
3151         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
3152         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
3153 </pre>
3154 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
3155 <pre>
3156
3157 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
3158         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
3159         option 'aggregated_ogms'
3160         option 'ap_isolation'
3161         option 'bonding'
3162         option 'fragmentation'
3163         option 'gw_bandwidth'
3164         option 'gw_mode'
3165         option 'gw_sel_class'
3166         option 'log_level'
3167         option 'orig_interval'
3168         option 'vis_mode'
3169         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
3170         option 'distributed_arp_table'
3171         option 'network_coding'
3172         option 'hop_penalty'
3173
3174 # yet another batX instance
3175 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
3176 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
3177 </pre>
3178
3179 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
3180 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
3181 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
3182
3183       </div>
3184       <div class="tags">
3185
3186
3187         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3188
3189
3190       </div>
3191     </div>
3192     <div class="padding"></div>
3193
3194     <div class="entry">
3195       <div class="title">
3196         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
3197       </div>
3198       <div class="date">
3199          2nd November 2013
3200       </div>
3201       <div class="body">
3202         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
3203 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
3204 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
3205 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
3206 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
3207
3208 <p><pre>
3209 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
3210 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
3211 # Provides:          rsyslog
3212 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
3213 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
3214 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
3215 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
3216 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
3217 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
3218 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
3219 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
3220 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
3221 ### END INIT INFO
3222 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
3223 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
3224 </pre></p>
3225
3226 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
3227 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
3228 info/comments.</p>
3229
3230 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
3231 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
3232
3233 <p><pre>
3234 #!/bin/sh
3235
3236 # Define LSB log_* functions.
3237 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
3238 # and status_of_proc is working.
3239 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
3240
3241 #
3242 # Function that starts the daemon/service
3243
3244 #
3245 do_start()
3246 {
3247         # Return
3248         #   0 if daemon has been started
3249         #   1 if daemon was already running
3250         #   2 if daemon could not be started
3251         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
3252                 || return 1
3253         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
3254                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
3255                 || return 2
3256         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
3257         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
3258         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
3259 }
3260
3261 #
3262 # Function that stops the daemon/service
3263 #
3264 do_stop()
3265 {
3266         # Return
3267         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
3268         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
3269         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
3270         #   other if a failure occurred
3271         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3272         RETVAL="$?"
3273         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
3274         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
3275         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
3276         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
3277         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
3278         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
3279         # sleep for some time.
3280         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
3281         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
3282         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
3283         rm -f $PIDFILE
3284         return "$RETVAL"
3285 }
3286
3287 #
3288 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
3289 #
3290 do_reload() {
3291         #
3292         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3293         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3294         # then implement that here.
3295         #
3296         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3297         return 0
3298 }
3299
3300 SCRIPTNAME=$1
3301 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
3302 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3303 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3304     script="$1"
3305     shift
3306     . $script
3307 else
3308     exit 0
3309 fi
3310
3311 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3312 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3313
3314 # Exit if the package is not installed
3315 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
3316
3317 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3318 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3319
3320 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3321 . /lib/init/vars.sh
3322
3323 case "$1" in
3324   start)
3325         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3326         do_start
3327         case "$?" in
3328                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3329                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3330         esac
3331         ;;
3332   stop)
3333         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3334         do_stop
3335         case "$?" in
3336                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3337                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3338         esac
3339         ;;
3340   status)
3341         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
3342         ;;
3343   #reload|force-reload)
3344         #
3345         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3346         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3347         #
3348         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3349         #do_reload
3350         #log_end_msg $?
3351         #;;
3352   restart|force-reload)
3353         #
3354         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3355         # 'force-reload' alias
3356         #
3357         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3358         do_stop
3359         case "$?" in
3360           0|1)
3361                 do_start
3362                 case "$?" in
3363                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
3364                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
3365                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
3366                 esac
3367                 ;;
3368           *)
3369                 # Failed to stop
3370                 log_end_msg 1
3371                 ;;
3372         esac
3373         ;;
3374   *)
3375         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
3376         exit 3
3377         ;;
3378 esac
3379
3380 :
3381 </pre></p>
3382
3383 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3384 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3385 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
3386 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
3387
3388 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3389 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3390 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3391 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
3392 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
3393
3394       </div>
3395       <div class="tags">
3396
3397
3398         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>.
3399
3400
3401       </div>
3402     </div>
3403     <div class="padding"></div>
3404
3405     <div class="entry">
3406       <div class="title">
3407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
3408       </div>
3409       <div class="date">
3410          1st November 2013
3411       </div>
3412       <div class="body">
3413         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
3414 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3415 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3416 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3417 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3418 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
3419 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3420 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3421 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
3422 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3423 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3424 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
3425
3426 <p>The source is now available from
3427 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
3428
3429       </div>
3430       <div class="tags">
3431
3432
3433         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>.
3434
3435
3436       </div>
3437     </div>
3438     <div class="padding"></div>
3439
3440     <div class="entry">
3441       <div class="title">
3442         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
3443       </div>
3444       <div class="date">
3445         27th October 2013
3446       </div>
3447       <div class="body">
3448         <p>The
3449 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
3450 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
3451 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3452 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3453 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3454 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
3455 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3456 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3457 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3458 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3459 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3460 Raspberry Pi.</p>
3461
3462 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3463 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3464 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3465 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3466 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3467 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3468 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
3469 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3470 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3471 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
3472 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
3473 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
3474 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3475 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3476 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
3477 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3478 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
3479 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3480 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3481 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
3482 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3483 available from
3484 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3485 upstream project page</a>.</p>
3486
3487 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3488 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3489 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3490 list:</p>
3491
3492 <p><pre>
3493 #!/bin/sh
3494 set -e # Exit on first error
3495 rootdir="$1"
3496 cd "$rootdir"
3497 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
3498 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3499 EOF
3500 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
3501 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3502 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3503     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3504 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3505 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3506 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3507 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3508 </pre></p>
3509
3510 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3511 to build the image:</p>
3512
3513 <pre>
3514 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3515     --variant minbase \
3516     --arch armel \
3517     --distribution jessie \
3518     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3519     --image test.img \
3520     --size 600M \
3521     --bootsize 64M \
3522     --boottype vfat \
3523     --log-level debug \
3524     --verbose \
3525     --no-kernel \
3526     --no-extlinux \
3527     --root-password raspberry \
3528     --hostname raspberrypi \
3529     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3530     --customize `pwd`/customize \
3531     --package netbase \
3532     --package git-core \
3533     --package binutils \
3534     --package ca-certificates \
3535     --package wget \
3536     --package kmod
3537 </pre></p>
3538
3539 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3540 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3541 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3542 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
3543 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3544 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3545 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
3546
3547 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3548 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
3549 build dependency list.</p>
3550
3551 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3552 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3553 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
3554 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
3555
3556       </div>
3557       <div class="tags">
3558
3559
3560         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
3561
3562
3563       </div>
3564     </div>
3565     <div class="padding"></div>
3566
3567     <div class="entry">
3568       <div class="title">
3569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
3570       </div>
3571       <div class="date">
3572         21st October 2013
3573       </div>
3574       <div class="body">
3575         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
3576 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
3577 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
3578 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
3579 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
3580 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
3581 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
3582 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
3583
3584 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
3585 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
3586 instead, I started playing with a
3587 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
3588 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
3589 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
3590 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
3591 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
3592 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
3593 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
3594 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
3595 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
3596 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
3597 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
3598 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
3599 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
3600 every client on the local network.</p>
3601
3602 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
3603 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
3604 and a script
3605 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
3606 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
3607 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
3608 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
3609 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
3610 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
3611 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
3612 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
3613 support.</p>
3614
3615 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
3616 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
3617
3618 <p><pre>
3619 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
3620     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
3621 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
3622 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
3623 %
3624 </pre></p>
3625
3626 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
3627 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
3628 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
3629 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
3630 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
3631 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
3632
3633 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
3634 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
3635 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
3636
3637 <p><table>
3638
3639 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
3640 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
3641 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
3642 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
3643 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
3644 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
3645
3646 </table></p>
3647
3648 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
3649 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
3650 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
3651 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
3652 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
3653 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
3654 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
3655
3656       </div>
3657       <div class="tags">
3658
3659
3660         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3661
3662
3663       </div>
3664     </div>
3665     <div class="padding"></div>
3666
3667     <div class="entry">
3668       <div class="title">
3669         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
3670       </div>
3671       <div class="date">
3672         19th October 2013
3673       </div>
3674       <div class="body">
3675         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
3676 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
3677 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
3678 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
3679 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
3680 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
3681 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
3682 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
3683
3684       </div>
3685       <div class="tags">
3686
3687
3688         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
3689
3690
3691       </div>
3692     </div>
3693     <div class="padding"></div>
3694
3695     <div class="entry">
3696       <div class="title">
3697         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
3698       </div>
3699       <div class="date">
3700         15th October 2013
3701       </div>
3702       <div class="body">
3703         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3704 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3705 these. :)</p>
3706
3707 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
3708 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
3709 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3710 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
3711 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
3712 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
3713 hope you will to. :)</p>
3714
3715 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3716 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3717 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
3718 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
3719 donated.  Are you next?</p>
3720
3721 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3722 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3723 statement under the heading
3724 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3725 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3726 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3727 too.</p>
3728
3729       </div>
3730       <div class="tags">
3731
3732
3733         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3734
3735
3736       </div>
3737     </div>
3738     <div class="padding"></div>
3739
3740     <div class="entry">
3741       <div class="title">
3742         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
3743       </div>
3744       <div class="date">
3745         11th October 2013
3746       </div>
3747       <div class="body">
3748         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
3749 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
3750 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
3751 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
3752 successful examples like
3753 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
3754 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
3755 (see
3756 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
3757 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
3758 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
3759 can be seen from their
3760 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
3761 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
3762 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
3763 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
3764 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
3765
3766 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
3767 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
3768 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
3769 my recent involvement in
3770 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
3771 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
3772 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
3773 when possible, given that most communication between people are
3774 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
3775 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
3776 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
3777 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
3778 important over the years.</p>
3779
3780 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
3781 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
3782 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
3783 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
3784 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
3785 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
3786 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
3787 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
3788 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
3789 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
3790 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
3791 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
3792 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
3793 speakers about this talk (from
3794 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
3795
3796 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
3797
3798 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
3799 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
3800 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
3801 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
3802 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
3803 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
3804 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
3805 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
3806 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
3807 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
3808 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
3809 that project (from
3810 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
3811
3812 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
3813
3814 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
3815 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
3816 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
3817 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
3818 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
3819 based community mesh networks.</p>
3820
3821 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
3822 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
3823 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
3824 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
3825 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
3826 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
3827 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
3828 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
3829 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
3830
3831 <p><table>
3832 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
3833 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
3834 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
3835 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
3836 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
3837 </table></p>
3838
3839 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
3840 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
3841 VillageTelco about
3842 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
3843 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
3844 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
3845 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
3846 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
3847 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
3848
3849 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
3850 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
3851 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
3852 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
3853
3854 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
3855 us on IRC, either channel
3856 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
3857 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
3858 irc.freenode.net.</p>
3859
3860 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
3861 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
3862 and Innovation called
3863 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
3864 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
3865 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
3866 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
3867 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
3868 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
3869 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
3870 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
3871
3872 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
3873 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
3874 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
3875 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
3876 mesh system.</p>
3877
3878       </div>
3879       <div class="tags">
3880
3881
3882         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3883
3884
3885       </div>
3886     </div>
3887     <div class="padding"></div>
3888
3889     <div class="entry">
3890       <div class="title">
3891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
3892       </div>
3893       <div class="date">
3894          8th October 2013
3895       </div>
3896       <div class="body">
3897         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
3898 Salvador had published a
3899 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
3900 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
3901 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
3902 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
3903 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
3904 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
3905 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
3906 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
3907 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
3908 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
3909 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
3910 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
3911 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
3912 computers without hard drives by installing one central
3913 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
3914
3915 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
3916
3917 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
3918
3919 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
3920 me know. :)</p>
3921
3922       </div>
3923       <div class="tags">
3924
3925
3926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3927
3928
3929       </div>
3930     </div>
3931     <div class="padding"></div>
3932
3933     <div class="entry">
3934       <div class="title">
3935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
3936       </div>
3937       <div class="date">
3938         29th September 2013
3939       </div>
3940       <div class="body">
3941         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
3942 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
3943 complete announcement text can be found at
3944 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
3945 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
3946
3947 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
3948 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
3949 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
3950 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
3951
3952       </div>
3953       <div class="tags">
3954
3955
3956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3957
3958
3959       </div>
3960     </div>
3961     <div class="padding"></div>
3962
3963     <div class="entry">
3964       <div class="title">
3965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
3966       </div>
3967       <div class="date">
3968         27th September 2013
3969       </div>
3970       <div class="body">
3971         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3972 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3973 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3974 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3975
3976 <ul>
3977
3978 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3979 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3980
3981 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3982 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3983
3984 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3985 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3986 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3987 (Youtube)</li>
3988
3989 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3990 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3991
3992 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3993 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3994
3995 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3996 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3997 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3998
3999 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
4000 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
4001 (Youtube)</li>
4002
4003 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
4004 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
4005
4006 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
4007 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
4008
4009 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
4010 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
4011 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
4012
4013 </ul>
4014
4015 <p>A larger list is available from
4016 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
4017 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
4018
4019 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
4020 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
4021 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
4022 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
4023 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
4024 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
4025 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
4026 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
4027 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
4028 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4029 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4030
4031       </div>
4032       <div class="tags">
4033
4034
4035         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4036
4037
4038       </div>
4039     </div>
4040     <div class="padding"></div>
4041
4042     <div class="entry">
4043       <div class="title">
4044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
4045       </div>
4046       <div class="date">
4047         16th September 2013
4048       </div>
4049       <div class="body">
4050         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4051 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
4052
4053 <blockquote>
4054 <p>Hi,</p>
4055
4056 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
4057 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4058 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
4059
4060 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
4061 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
4062 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
4063 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
4064
4065 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
4066 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
4067
4068 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
4069 compared to beta1:</p>
4070
4071 <ul>
4072
4073 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
4074 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
4075 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
4076 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
4077 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
4078 main server.</li>
4079 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
4080 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
4081 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
4082 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
4083 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
4084
4085 </ul>
4086
4087 <p>Where to get it:</p>
4088
4089 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4090
4091 <ul>
4092 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
4093 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
4094 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
4095 </ul>
4096
4097 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
4098
4099 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
4100 <ul>
4101 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
4102 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
4103 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
4104 </ul>
4105
4106 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
4107
4108 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
4109 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
4110 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
4111 as the other isos.</p>
4112
4113 <p>How to report bugs</p>
4114
4115 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
4116 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4117
4118
4119 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
4120
4121 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
4122 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
4123 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
4124 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
4125 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
4126 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
4127 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
4128 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
4129 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
4130 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
4131 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
4132 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
4133 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4134
4135 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4136 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4137 Squeeze release.</p>
4138
4139 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
4140
4141 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4142 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4143 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
4144 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
4145 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
4146 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
4147 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
4148 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
4149 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
4150 directory.</p>
4151
4152
4153 <p>cheers,
4154 <br>        Holger</p>
4155 </blockquote>
4156
4157       </div>
4158       <div class="tags">
4159
4160
4161         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4162
4163
4164       </div>
4165     </div>
4166     <div class="padding"></div>
4167
4168     <div class="entry">
4169       <div class="title">
4170         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
4171       </div>
4172       <div class="date">
4173         10th September 2013
4174       </div>
4175       <div class="body">
4176         <p>I was introduced to the
4177 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
4178 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
4179 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
4180 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
4181 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
4182 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
4183 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
4184 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
4185
4186 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
4187 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
4188 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
4189 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
4190 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
4191
4192 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
4193 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
4194 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
4195 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
4196 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
4197 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
4198 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
4199 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
4200 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
4201 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
4202 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
4203 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
4204 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
4205 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
4206 missing in Debian).</p>
4207
4208 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
4209 scripts
4210 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
4211 and a administrative web interface
4212 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
4213 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
4214 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
4215 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
4216 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
4217 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
4218 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
4219 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
4220 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
4221 this is really working yet, see
4222 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
4223 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
4224 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
4225 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
4226 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
4227 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
4228 with lots of half baked features.</p>
4229
4230 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
4231 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
4232 at.</p>
4233
4234 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
4235
4236 <ol>
4237
4238 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
4239 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
4240 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
4241 to the Debian installer:<p>
4242 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
4243
4244 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
4245 install on.</li>
4246
4247 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
4248 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
4249
4250 </ol>
4251
4252 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
4253
4254 <ol>
4255
4256 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
4257 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
4258 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
4259 <pre>
4260 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
4261 </pre></li>
4262 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
4263 <pre>
4264 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
4265    apt-key add -
4266 apt-get update
4267 apt-get install freedombox-setup
4268 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
4269 </pre></li>
4270 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
4271
4272 </ol>
4273
4274 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
4275 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
4276 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
4277 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
4278 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
4279
4280 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
4281 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
4282 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
4283 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
4284
4285 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
4286 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
4287 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
4288 irc.debian.org and the
4289 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
4290 mailing list</a>.</p>
4291
4292 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
4293 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
4294 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
4295 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
4296 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
4297 default password is 'secret'.</p>
4298
4299       </div>
4300       <div class="tags">
4301
4302
4303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4304
4305
4306       </div>
4307     </div>
4308     <div class="padding"></div>
4309
4310     <div class="entry">
4311       <div class="title">
4312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4313       </div>
4314       <div class="date">
4315         22nd August 2013
4316       </div>
4317       <div class="body">
4318         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4319 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
4320 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
4321
4322 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
4323
4324 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4325 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4326
4327 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4328
4329 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4330 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4331 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4332 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4333 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4334 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4335 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4336 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
4337 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4338 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4339 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4340 desktop contains
4341 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4342 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
4343 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4344 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4345
4346 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
4347 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
4348 release.</p>
4349
4350 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4351 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4352 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
4353 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
4354 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
4355 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
4356 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
4357 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
4358 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
4359 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
4360 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
4361
4362 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4363
4364 <ul>
4365
4366 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
4367     work also without a attached tty.</li>
4368 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
4369     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
4370     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
4371     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
4372     required).</li>
4373
4374 </ul>
4375
4376 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4377
4378 <ul>
4379
4380 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
4381 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
4382 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
4383 stick ISO image.</li>
4384 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
4385 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
4386 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
4387     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
4388     cope with this.</li>
4389 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
4390 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
4391     empty password hashes.</li>
4392 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
4393     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
4394     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
4395
4396 </ul>
4397
4398 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4399
4400 <ul>
4401
4402 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
4403     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
4404 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
4405     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
4406
4407 </ul>
4408
4409 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4410
4411 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4412
4413 <ul>
4414
4415 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
4416
4417 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
4418
4419 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
4420
4421 </ul>
4422
4423 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
4424 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
4425
4426 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
4427
4428 <ul>
4429
4430 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
4431 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
4432 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
4433
4434 </ul>
4435
4436 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
4437 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
4438
4439
4440 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4441
4442 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
4443
4444       </div>
4445       <div class="tags">
4446
4447
4448         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4449
4450
4451       </div>
4452     </div>
4453     <div class="padding"></div>
4454
4455     <div class="entry">
4456       <div class="title">
4457         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
4458       </div>
4459       <div class="date">
4460         18th August 2013
4461       </div>
4462       <div class="body">
4463         <p>Earlier, I reported about
4464 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
4465 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
4466 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
4467 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
4468 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
4469 currently on the disk.</p>
4470
4471 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
4472 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
4473 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
4474 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
4475 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
4476 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
4477 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
4478 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
4479 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
4480 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
4481 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
4482 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
4483 the broken disks.</p>
4484
4485       </div>
4486       <div class="tags">
4487
4488
4489         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>.
4490
4491
4492       </div>
4493     </div>
4494     <div class="padding"></div>
4495
4496     <div class="entry">
4497       <div class="title">
4498         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
4499       </div>
4500       <div class="date">
4501          2nd August 2013
4502       </div>
4503       <div class="body">
4504         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
4505 have worked on a Norwegian
4506 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
4507 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
4508 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
4509 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
4510 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
4511 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
4512 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
4513 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
4514 progress of the translation:</p>
4515
4516 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
4517
4518 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
4519 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
4520 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
4521 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
4522 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
4523 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
4524 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
4525 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
4526 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
4527 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
4528 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
4529
4530 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
4531 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
4532 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
4533 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
4534 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
4535 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
4536 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
4537 project files currently available from
4538 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
4539
4540 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
4541 the updated
4542 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
4543 and
4544 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
4545 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
4546 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
4547 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
4548
4549       </div>
4550       <div class="tags">
4551
4552
4553         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
4554
4555
4556       </div>
4557     </div>
4558     <div class="padding"></div>
4559
4560     <div class="entry">
4561       <div class="title">
4562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4563       </div>
4564       <div class="date">
4565         27th July 2013
4566       </div>
4567       <div class="body">
4568         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4569 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4570
4571 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
4572 2013-07-27</strong></p>
4573
4574 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4575 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4576
4577 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4578
4579 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4580 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4581 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4582 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4583 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4584 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4585 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4586 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4587 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4588 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4589 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4590 desktop contains
4591 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4592 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
4593 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4594 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4595
4596 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4597 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4598 Squeeze release.</p>
4599
4600 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4601 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4602 release.</p>
4603
4604 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4605
4606 <ul>
4607
4608 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
4609    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
4610 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
4611    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
4612    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
4613    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
4614    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
4615 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
4616 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
4617 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
4618    crash bugs.</li>
4619
4620 </ul>
4621
4622 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4623
4624 <ul>
4625
4626 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
4627    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
4628 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
4629    netinst CD.</li>
4630 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
4631    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
4632 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
4633    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
4634    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
4635 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
4636    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
4637    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
4638 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
4639    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
4640    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
4641 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
4642    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
4643 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
4644
4645 </ul>
4646
4647 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4648
4649 <ul>
4650
4651 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
4652 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
4653     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
4654 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
4655
4656 </ul>
4657
4658 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4659
4660 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4661
4662 <ul>
4663
4664 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
4665
4666 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
4667
4668 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
4669
4670 </ul>
4671
4672 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
4673 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
4674
4675 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
4676
4677 <ul>
4678
4679 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
4680 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
4681 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
4682
4683 </ul>
4684
4685 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
4686 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
4687
4688
4689 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4690
4691 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
4692
4693       </div>
4694       <div class="tags">
4695
4696
4697         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4698
4699
4700       </div>
4701     </div>
4702     <div class="padding"></div>
4703
4704     <div class="entry">
4705       <div class="title">
4706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
4707       </div>
4708       <div class="date">
4709         17th July 2013
4710       </div>
4711       <div class="body">
4712         <p>Today I switched to
4713 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
4714 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
4715 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
4716 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
4717 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
4718 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
4719 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
4720 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
4721 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
4722 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
4723 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
4724 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
4725 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
4726 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
4727 station from now on.</p>
4728
4729 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
4730 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
4731 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
4732 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
4733 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
4734 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
4735 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
4736 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
4737 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
4738 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
4739 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
4740 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
4741
4742 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
4743 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
4744 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
4745 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
4746 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
4747 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
4748 parameters are tuned:</p>
4749
4750 <ul>
4751
4752 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
4753     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
4754
4755 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
4756     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
4757     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
4758
4759 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
4760     systems.</li>
4761
4762 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
4763     /etc/fstab.</li>
4764
4765 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
4766
4767 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
4768     cron.daily).</li>
4769
4770 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
4771     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
4772
4773 </ul>
4774
4775 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
4776 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
4777 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
4778 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
4779 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
4780 from getting the data on the disk (see
4781 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
4782 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
4783 right thing to do.</p>
4784
4785 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
4786 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
4787 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
4788
4789 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
4790 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
4791 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
4792 instead of during my work.</p>
4793
4794 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
4795 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
4796
4797 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
4798 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
4799 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
4800
4801 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
4802 there.</p>
4803
4804 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
4805 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
4806 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
4807 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
4808 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
4809 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
4810 back.</p>
4811
4812       </div>
4813       <div class="tags">
4814
4815
4816         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>.
4817
4818
4819       </div>
4820     </div>
4821     <div class="padding"></div>
4822
4823     <div class="entry">
4824       <div class="title">
4825         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
4826       </div>
4827       <div class="date">
4828         10th July 2013
4829       </div>
4830       <div class="body">
4831         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
4832 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
4833 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
4834 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
4835 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
4836 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
4837 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
4838 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
4839
4840 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
4841 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
4842 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
4843 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
4844 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
4845 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
4846 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
4847 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
4848 lock up when I download a new
4849 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
4850 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
4851 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
4852
4853 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4854 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
4855 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4856 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
4857 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4858 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4859
4860 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4861 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
4862 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4863 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
4864 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4865 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4866
4867 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
4868 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
4869 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
4870 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
4871 exist).</p>
4872
4873       </div>
4874       <div class="tags">
4875
4876
4877         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>.
4878
4879
4880       </div>
4881     </div>
4882     <div class="padding"></div>
4883
4884     <div class="entry">
4885       <div class="title">
4886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
4887       </div>
4888       <div class="date">
4889          9th July 2013
4890       </div>
4891       <div class="body">
4892         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
4893 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
4894 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
4895 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
4896 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4897 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
4898 Bitraf</a>.</p>
4899
4900 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
4901 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
4902 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
4903 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
4904 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
4905
4906       </div>
4907       <div class="tags">
4908
4909
4910         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>.
4911
4912
4913       </div>
4914     </div>
4915     <div class="padding"></div>
4916
4917     <div class="entry">
4918       <div class="title">
4919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
4920       </div>
4921       <div class="date">
4922          5th July 2013
4923       </div>
4924       <div class="body">
4925         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
4926 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
4927 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
4928 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
4929 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
4930 ended up picking a
4931 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
4932 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
4933 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
4934 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
4935 on that below.</p>
4936
4937 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4938 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4939 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4940 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4941 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4942 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
4943 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
4944 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
4945 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
4946
4947 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
4948 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
4949 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
4950 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
4951 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
4952 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
4953 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
4954
4955 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
4956 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
4957
4958 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
4959 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
4960 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
4961 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
4962 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
4963 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
4964 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
4965 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
4966 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
4967 kernel developers as
4968 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
4969 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
4970 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
4971 Lenovo forums, both for
4972 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
4973 2012-11-10</a> and for
4974 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
4975 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
4976 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
4977 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
4978 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
4979 There is even a
4980 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
4981 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
4982 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
4983
4984 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
4985 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
4986 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
4987 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
4988 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
4989 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
4990 fixed. :)</p>
4991
4992       </div>
4993       <div class="tags">
4994
4995
4996         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>.
4997
4998
4999       </div>
5000     </div>
5001     <div class="padding"></div>
5002
5003     <div class="entry">
5004       <div class="title">
5005         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
5006       </div>
5007       <div class="date">
5008          4th July 2013
5009       </div>
5010       <div class="body">
5011         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
5012 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
5013 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
5014 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
5015 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
5016 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
5017 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
5018 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
5019 with an expencive door stop.</p>
5020
5021 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5022 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5023 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5024 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5025 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5026 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
5027 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
5028
5029 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
5030 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
5031 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
5032 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
5033 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
5034 new laptop now. :)</p>
5035
5036 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
5037
5038       </div>
5039       <div class="tags">
5040
5041
5042         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>.
5043
5044
5045       </div>
5046     </div>
5047     <div class="padding"></div>
5048
5049     <div class="entry">
5050       <div class="title">
5051         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5052       </div>
5053       <div class="date">
5054          3rd July 2013
5055       </div>
5056       <div class="body">
5057         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5058 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5059
5060 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
5061 2013-07-03</strong></p>
5062
5063 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5064 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5065
5066 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5067
5068 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5069 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5070 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5071 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5072 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5073 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5074 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5075 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5076 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5077 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5078 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5079 desktop contains
5080 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5081 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5082 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5083 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5084
5085 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5086 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5087 Squeeze release.</p>
5088
5089 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5090 <ul>
5091   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
5092   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
5093     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
5094     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
5095   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
5096     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
5097     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
5098   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
5099     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
5100     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
5101     too.</li>
5102   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
5103     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
5104 </ul>
5105 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5106 <ul>
5107   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
5108   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
5109   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
5110     up for some language options.</li>
5111   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
5112   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
5113   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
5114     d-i is doing it.</li>
5115   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
5116     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
5117   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
5118     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
5119     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
5120   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
5121     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
5122   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
5123   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
5124     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
5125   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
5126     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
5127 </ul>
5128 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5129 <ul>
5130   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
5131     available yet (698840).</li>
5132   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
5133 </ul>
5134 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5135
5136 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5137 <ul>
5138   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
5139   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
5140   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
5141 </ul>
5142
5143 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
5144 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
5145
5146 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
5147 <ul>
5148   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
5149   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
5150   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
5151 </ul>
5152
5153 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
5154 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
5155
5156 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5157
5158 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5159
5160       </div>
5161       <div class="tags">
5162
5163
5164         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5165
5166
5167       </div>
5168     </div>
5169     <div class="padding"></div>
5170
5171     <div class="entry">
5172       <div class="title">
5173         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
5174       </div>
5175       <div class="date">
5176         25th June 2013
5177       </div>
5178       <div class="body">
5179         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
5180 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
5181 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
5182 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
5183 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
5184 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
5185 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
5186 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
5187 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
5188 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
5189 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
5190
5191 <p><pre>
5192 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5193 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
5194 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
5195 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
5196 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
5197 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
5198 firmware-ipw2x00
5199 firmware-ipw2x00
5200 Preconfiguring packages ...
5201 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
5202 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
5203 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
5204 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
5205 #
5206 </pre></p>
5207
5208 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
5209 printed instead:</p>
5210
5211 <p><pre>
5212 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5213 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
5214 #
5215 </pre></p>
5216
5217 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
5218 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
5219
5220 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
5221 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
5222 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
5223 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
5224 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
5225 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
5226 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
5227 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
5228 machine.</p>
5229
5230 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
5231 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
5232 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
5233 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
5234 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
5235 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
5236
5237       </div>
5238       <div class="tags">
5239
5240
5241         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5242
5243
5244       </div>
5245     </div>
5246     <div class="padding"></div>
5247
5248     <div class="entry">
5249       <div class="title">
5250         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
5251       </div>
5252       <div class="date">
5253         22nd June 2013
5254       </div>
5255       <div class="body">
5256         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5257 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
5258 which check that services are running, working, and return the
5259 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
5260 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
5261 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
5262 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
5263 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
5264 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
5265
5266 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
5267 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
5268 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
5269 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
5270 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
5271 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
5272 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
5273 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
5274 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
5275 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
5276 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
5277 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
5278 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
5279 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
5280
5281 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
5282 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
5283 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
5284 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
5285 the problem.</p>
5286
5287 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
5288 please join us on
5289 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
5290 irc.debian.org</a> and the
5291 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
5292 list.</p>
5293
5294       </div>
5295       <div class="tags">
5296
5297
5298         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5299
5300
5301       </div>
5302     </div>
5303     <div class="padding"></div>
5304
5305     <div class="entry">
5306       <div class="title">
5307         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
5308       </div>
5309       <div class="date">
5310         17th June 2013
5311       </div>
5312       <div class="body">
5313         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
5314 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
5315 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
5316 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
5317 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
5318 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
5319 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
5320 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
5321
5322 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5323
5324 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
5325 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
5326 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
5327 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
5328 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
5329 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
5330 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
5331 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
5332 field.</p>
5333
5334 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
5335 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
5336 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
5337 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
5338 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
5339 the only one we have in our country.</p>
5340
5341 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5342 project?</strong></p>
5343
5344 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
5345 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
5346 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
5347 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
5348 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
5349 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
5350 ways to contribute.</p>
5351
5352 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
5353 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
5354 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
5355 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
5356 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
5357 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
5358 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
5359 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
5360 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
5361 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
5362
5363 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5364 Edu?</strong></p>
5365
5366 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
5367 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
5368 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
5369 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
5370 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
5371 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
5372 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
5373 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
5374
5375 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
5376 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
5377 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
5378 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
5379 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
5380 project.</p>
5381
5382 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5383 Edu?</strong></p>
5384
5385 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
5386 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
5387 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
5388 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
5389 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
5390 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
5391 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
5392 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
5393 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
5394
5395 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
5396 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
5397 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
5398 on.</p>
5399
5400 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5401
5402 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
5403 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
5404 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
5405 Enlightenment project a lot!),
5406 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
5407 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
5408 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
5409 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
5410 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
5411
5412 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5413 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5414
5415 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
5416 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
5417 that:</p>
5418
5419 <ul>
5420
5421 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
5422
5423 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
5424     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
5425     of teenagers more?</li>
5426
5427 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
5428     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
5429     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
5430     them!)</li>
5431
5432 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
5433     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
5434     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
5435
5436 </ul>
5437
5438 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
5439 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
5440 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
5441 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
5442 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
5443
5444       </div>
5445       <div class="tags">
5446
5447
5448         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5449
5450
5451       </div>
5452     </div>
5453     <div class="padding"></div>
5454
5455     <div class="entry">
5456       <div class="title">
5457         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
5458       </div>
5459       <div class="date">
5460         12th June 2013
5461       </div>
5462       <div class="body">
5463         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
5464 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5465 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
5466 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
5467 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
5468 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
5469
5470 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5471
5472 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
5473 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
5474 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
5475
5476 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
5477 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
5478 each other.</p>
5479
5480 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5481 project?</strong></p>
5482
5483 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
5484 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
5485 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
5486 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
5487 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
5488 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
5489 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
5490 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
5491 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
5492 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
5493 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
5494 we'll get there one day.</p>
5495
5496 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5497 Edu?</strong></p>
5498
5499 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
5500 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
5501 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
5502 very high quality work.</p>
5503
5504 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
5505 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
5506 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
5507 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
5508 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
5509
5510 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5511 Edu?</strong></p>
5512
5513 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
5514 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
5515 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
5516
5517 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
5518 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
5519 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
5520 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
5521 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
5522 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
5523 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
5524 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
5525 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
5526 currently.</p>
5527
5528 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
5529 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
5530 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
5531 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
5532 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
5533 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
5534 autonomous.</p>
5535
5536 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5537
5538 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
5539 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
5540 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
5541 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
5542 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
5543
5544 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
5545 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
5546 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
5547 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
5548 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
5549 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
5550 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
5551 X.</p>
5552
5553 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
5554 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
5555 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
5556 it :p)
5557
5558 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5559 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5560
5561 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
5562 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
5563 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
5564 that.</p>
5565
5566 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
5567 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
5568 advantage of that.</p>
5569
5570 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
5571 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
5572 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
5573 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
5574 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
5575 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
5576 best solution for them.</p>
5577
5578 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
5579 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
5580 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
5581
5582       </div>
5583       <div class="tags">
5584
5585
5586         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5587
5588
5589       </div>
5590     </div>
5591     <div class="padding"></div>
5592
5593     <div class="entry">
5594       <div class="title">
5595         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
5596       </div>
5597       <div class="date">
5598         11th June 2013
5599       </div>
5600       <div class="body">
5601         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
5602 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
5603 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
5604 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
5605 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
5606 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
5607 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
5608 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
5609 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
5610 i915 driver used by the
5611 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
5612 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
5613
5614 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
5615 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
5616 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
5617 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
5618 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
5619
5620 <pre>
5621 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
5622 update-initramfs -u -k all
5623 </pre>
5624
5625 <p>Since March 2012 there is
5626 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
5627 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
5628 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
5629 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
5630 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
5631 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
5632 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
5633 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
5634 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
5635 number.</p>
5636
5637 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
5638 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
5639
5640 <p><pre>
5641 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
5642     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
5643     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
5644  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
5645  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
5646     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
5647  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
5648     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
5649  Latency: 0
5650  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
5651  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
5652  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
5653  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
5654  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
5655  Capabilities: <access denied>
5656  Kernel driver in use: i915
5657 </pre></p>
5658
5659 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
5660
5661 <p><pre>
5662 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
5663        ...
5664         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
5665         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
5666        ...
5667 }
5668 </pre></p>
5669
5670 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
5671 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
5672 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
5673 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
5674 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
5675 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
5676 yet shown up in
5677 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
5678 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
5679 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
5680 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
5681 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
5682 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
5683
5684 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
5685 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
5686 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
5687 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
5688 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
5689 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
5690 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
5691 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
5692 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
5693 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
5694 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
5695 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
5696
5697 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
5698 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
5699 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
5700 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
5701 backlight.</p>
5702
5703       </div>
5704       <div class="tags">
5705
5706
5707         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>.
5708
5709
5710       </div>
5711     </div>
5712     <div class="padding"></div>
5713
5714     <div class="entry">
5715       <div class="title">
5716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5717       </div>
5718       <div class="date">
5719         10th June 2013
5720       </div>
5721       <div class="body">
5722         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5723 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5724
5725 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
5726 2013-06-10</strong></p>
5727
5728 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
5729 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5730
5731 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5732
5733 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5734 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5735 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5736 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5737 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5738 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5739 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5740 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5741 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5742 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5743 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5744 desktop contains
5745 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5746 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5747 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5748 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5749
5750 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5751 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5752 Squeeze release.</p>
5753
5754 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5755
5756 <ul>
5757
5758 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
5759 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
5760 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
5761 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
5762 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
5763
5764 </ul>
5765
5766 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5767
5768 <ul>
5769
5770 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
5771 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
5772 <li>New Romanian translation.
5773 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
5774 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
5775 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
5776 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
5777 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
5778 <li>More testsuite tests.
5779 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
5780 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
5781
5782 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
5783 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
5784
5785 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
5786 them up with GOsa².</li>
5787
5788 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
5789
5790 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
5791 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
5792 entered password). </li>
5793
5794 </ul>
5795
5796 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5797
5798 <ul>
5799
5800 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
5801
5802 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
5803 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
5804 missing import feature).</li>
5805
5806 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
5807
5808 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
5809 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
5810 unfixed.</li>
5811
5812 </ul>
5813
5814 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5815
5816 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5817
5818 <ul>
5819
5820 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
5821
5822 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
5823
5824 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
5825
5826 </ul>
5827
5828 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
5829 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
5830
5831 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5832
5833 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
5834
5835       </div>
5836       <div class="tags">
5837
5838
5839         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5840
5841
5842       </div>
5843     </div>
5844     <div class="padding"></div>
5845
5846     <div class="entry">
5847       <div class="title">
5848         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
5849       </div>
5850       <div class="date">
5851          5th June 2013
5852       </div>
5853       <div class="body">
5854         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
5855 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
5856 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
5857 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
5858 the project:
5859
5860 <ol>
5861
5862 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
5863   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
5864   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
5865   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
5866   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
5867
5868 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
5869   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
5870   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
5871   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
5872   #698840</a>.</li>
5873
5874 </ol>
5875
5876 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
5877 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
5878 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
5879
5880       </div>
5881       <div class="tags">
5882
5883
5884         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5885
5886
5887       </div>
5888     </div>
5889     <div class="padding"></div>
5890
5891     <div class="entry">
5892       <div class="title">
5893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
5894       </div>
5895       <div class="date">
5896          4th June 2013
5897       </div>
5898       <div class="body">
5899         <p>It has been a while since my last English
5900 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5901 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
5902 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
5903 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
5904 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
5905
5906 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5907
5908 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
5909 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
5910 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
5911 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
5912
5913 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
5914 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
5915 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
5916
5917 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5918 project?</strong></p>
5919
5920 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
5921 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
5922 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
5923 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
5924 manual.
5925
5926 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
5927 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
5928 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
5929 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
5930
5931 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
5932 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
5933 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
5934 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
5935 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
5936 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
5937 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
5938 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
5939 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
5940 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
5941
5942 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
5943 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
5944 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
5945 beautiful project.</p>
5946
5947 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5948 Edu?</strong></p>
5949
5950 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
5951 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
5952 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
5953
5954 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
5955 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
5956 of educational free software.</p>
5957
5958 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5959 Edu?</strong></p>
5960
5961 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
5962 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
5963 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
5964 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
5965 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
5966
5967 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
5968 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
5969 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
5970 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
5971 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
5972 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
5973 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
5974 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
5975
5976 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5977
5978 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
5979 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
5980 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
5981 also using the mathematical software
5982 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
5983 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
5984 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
5985
5986 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
5987 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
5988 statistics?</strong></p>
5989
5990 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
5991 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
5992 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
5993 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
5994
5995 <ul>
5996
5997 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
5998 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
5999 constructions in planar geometry
6000
6001 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
6002 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
6003 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
6004
6005 </ul>
6006
6007 <p>I like also
6008 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
6009 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
6010 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
6011
6012 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6013 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6014
6015 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
6016
6017 <ul>
6018
6019 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
6020
6021 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
6022     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
6023     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
6024
6025 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
6026
6027 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
6028     system.</li>
6029
6030 </ul>
6031
6032       </div>
6033       <div class="tags">
6034
6035
6036         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6037
6038
6039       </div>
6040     </div>
6041     <div class="padding"></div>
6042
6043     <div class="entry">
6044       <div class="title">
6045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
6046       </div>
6047       <div class="date">
6048          1st June 2013
6049       </div>
6050       <div class="body">
6051         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6052 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
6053 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
6054 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
6055 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
6056 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
6057 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
6058 program.</p>
6059
6060 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
6061
6062 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
6063 <p>
6064 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
6065 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
6066 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
6067 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
6068 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6069 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
6070 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
6071 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
6072 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
6073 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
6074 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
6075 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
6076 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
6077 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
6078 </p>
6079
6080 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
6081 <p>
6082 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
6083 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
6084 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
6085 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
6086 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
6087 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
6088 </p>
6089
6090 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
6091 <p>
6092 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
6093 </p>
6094
6095 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
6096 <p>
6097 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
6098 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
6099 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
6100 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
6101 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
6102 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
6103 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
6104 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
6105 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
6106 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
6107 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
6108 </p>
6109
6110 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
6111 <p>
6112 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6113 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
6114 </p>
6115
6116 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
6117 <p>
6118 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
6119 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
6120 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
6121 </p>
6122
6123 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
6124 <p>
6125 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6126 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
6127 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
6128 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
6129 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
6130 </p>
6131
6132 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
6133 <p>
6134 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
6135 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
6136 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6137 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
6138 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
6139 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
6140 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
6141 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
6142 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
6143 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
6144 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
6145 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
6146 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
6147 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
6148 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
6149 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
6150 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
6151 </p>
6152
6153 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
6154 <p>
6155 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6156 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
6157 </p>
6158
6159 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
6160 <p>
6161 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
6162 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
6163 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
6164 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6165 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
6166 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
6167 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
6168 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
6169 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
6170 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
6171 </p>
6172
6173 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
6174 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
6175 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
6176 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
6177 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
6178 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
6179 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
6180
6181       </div>
6182       <div class="tags">
6183
6184
6185         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6186
6187
6188       </div>
6189     </div>
6190     <div class="padding"></div>
6191
6192     <div class="entry">
6193       <div class="title">
6194         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
6195       </div>
6196       <div class="date">
6197         27th May 2013
6198       </div>
6199       <div class="body">
6200         <p>Two days ago, I asked
6201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
6202 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
6203 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
6204 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
6205 and Windows 8.</p>
6206
6207 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
6208 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
6209 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
6210 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
6211 enough to tell.</p>
6212
6213 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
6214 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
6215 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
6216 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
6217 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
6218 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
6219 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
6220 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
6221 to follow.</p>
6222
6223 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
6224 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
6225 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
6226 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
6227 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
6228 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
6229 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
6230 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
6231
6232 <p>I've updated the
6233 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
6234 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
6235 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
6236 machine.</p>
6237
6238 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
6239 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
6240
6241       </div>
6242       <div class="tags">
6243
6244
6245         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>.
6246
6247
6248       </div>
6249     </div>
6250     <div class="padding"></div>
6251
6252     <div class="entry">
6253       <div class="title">
6254         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
6255       </div>
6256       <div class="date">
6257         25th May 2013
6258       </div>
6259       <div class="body">
6260         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
6261 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
6262 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
6263 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
6264 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
6265 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
6266
6267 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
6268 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
6269 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
6270 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
6271 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
6272 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
6273 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
6274 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
6275 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
6276 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
6277
6278 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
6279 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6280 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
6281 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
6282 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
6283 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
6284
6285 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
6286 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
6287 on new Laptops?</p>
6288
6289       </div>
6290       <div class="tags">
6291
6292
6293         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>.
6294
6295
6296       </div>
6297     </div>
6298     <div class="padding"></div>
6299
6300     <div class="entry">
6301       <div class="title">
6302         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
6303       </div>
6304       <div class="date">
6305         17th May 2013
6306       </div>
6307       <div class="body">
6308         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
6309 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
6310 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
6311 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
6312 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
6313 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
6314 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
6315 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
6316 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
6317 donate some money</a>.
6318
6319 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
6320 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
6321 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
6322 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
6323 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
6324
6325 <p>The script,
6326 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
6327 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
6328 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
6329 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
6330
6331 <ol>
6332
6333 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
6334 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
6335 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
6336     our configuration.</li>
6337 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
6338     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
6339     according to the profile specified in the config above,
6340     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
6341 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
6342     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
6343 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
6344
6345 </ol>
6346
6347 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
6348 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
6349 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
6350 the needed packages.</p>
6351
6352 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
6353 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
6354 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
6355 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
6356 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
6357 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
6358
6359 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
6360 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
6361 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
6362
6363 <p><pre>
6364 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
6365 DESKTOP="lxde"
6366 </pre></p>
6367
6368 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
6369 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
6370 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
6371 boot.</p>
6372
6373       </div>
6374       <div class="tags">
6375
6376
6377         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>.
6378
6379
6380       </div>
6381     </div>
6382     <div class="padding"></div>
6383
6384     <div class="entry">
6385       <div class="title">
6386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6387       </div>
6388       <div class="date">
6389         14th May 2013
6390       </div>
6391       <div class="body">
6392         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6393 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
6394 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6395
6396 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
6397 2013-05-14</strong></p>
6398
6399 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
6400 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
6401 codename "Wheezy".</p>
6402
6403 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6404
6405 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6406 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6407 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
6408 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6409 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6410 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6411 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
6412 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
6413
6414 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
6415 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
6416 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
6417
6418 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6419 <ul>
6420   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
6421     default.</li>
6422   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
6423   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
6424   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
6425     ibus-anthy.</li>
6426 </ul>
6427
6428 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6429 <ul>
6430
6431   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
6432     reliability improvements.</li>
6433   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
6434     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
6435   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
6436     problems.</li>
6437   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
6438     direct:// URL.</li>
6439   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
6440   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
6441   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
6442   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
6443     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
6444   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
6445     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
6446 </ul>
6447
6448 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6449 <ul>
6450
6451   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
6452     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
6453     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
6454   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
6455   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6456     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
6457   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
6458   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
6459   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
6460     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
6461   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
6462     password submission problem
6463     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
6464
6465 </ul>
6466
6467 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6468
6469 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6470 <ul>
6471
6472   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
6473   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
6474   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
6475
6476 </ul>
6477
6478 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
6479
6480 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
6481
6482 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6483
6484 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6485
6486       </div>
6487       <div class="tags">
6488
6489
6490         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6491
6492
6493       </div>
6494     </div>
6495     <div class="padding"></div>
6496
6497     <div class="entry">
6498       <div class="title">
6499         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
6500       </div>
6501       <div class="date">
6502         11th May 2013
6503       </div>
6504       <div class="body">
6505         <P>In January,
6506 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
6507 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
6508 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
6509 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
6510 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
6511 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
6512 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
6513 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
6514 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
6515 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
6516 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
6517 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
6518
6519 <p><table>
6520 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
6521 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
6522 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
6523 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
6524 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
6525 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
6526 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
6527 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
6528 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
6529 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
6530 </table></p>
6531
6532 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
6533 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
6534 available in experimental.</p>
6535
6536 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
6537 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
6538 for LEGO designers.</p>
6539
6540       </div>
6541       <div class="tags">
6542
6543
6544         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
6545
6546
6547       </div>
6548     </div>
6549     <div class="padding"></div>
6550
6551     <div class="entry">
6552       <div class="title">
6553         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
6554       </div>
6555       <div class="date">
6556          5th May 2013
6557       </div>
6558       <div class="body">
6559         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
6560 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
6561 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
6562 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
6563 soon.</p>
6564
6565 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
6566 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
6567 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
6568 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
6569 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
6570 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
6571 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
6572 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
6573 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
6574 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
6575 Edu.</a>
6576
6577 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
6578 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
6579 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
6580 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
6581 follow.<p>
6582
6583       </div>
6584       <div class="tags">
6585
6586
6587         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>.
6588
6589
6590       </div>
6591     </div>
6592     <div class="padding"></div>
6593
6594     <div class="entry">
6595       <div class="title">
6596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6597       </div>
6598       <div class="date">
6599         26th April 2013
6600       </div>
6601       <div class="body">
6602         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
6603 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
6604 announcement:</p>
6605
6606 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
6607 2013-04-26</strong></p>
6608
6609 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
6610 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6611
6612 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6613
6614 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6615 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6616 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6617 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
6618 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6619 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6620 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6621 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6622 installed via the network.</p>
6623
6624 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
6625 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
6626 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
6627
6628 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6629
6630 <ul>
6631 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
6632   <ul>
6633      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
6634      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
6635          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
6636          manual.)</li>
6637      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
6638      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
6639      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
6640      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
6641      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
6642      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
6643      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
6644      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
6645      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
6646      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
6647      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
6648      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
6649          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
6650          manual</a> for more details.</li>
6651      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
6652          installation.</li>
6653      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
6654          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
6655   </ul></li>
6656 </ul>
6657
6658 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
6659 <ul>
6660 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
6661     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
6662     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
6663 </ul>
6664
6665 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
6666 <ul>
6667 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
6668     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
6669     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
6670 </ul>
6671
6672 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6673 <ul>
6674 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
6675     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
6676     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
6677 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
6678     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
6679     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
6680 </ul>
6681
6682 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
6683 <ul>
6684 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
6685     yet.</li>
6686 </ul>
6687
6688 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
6689
6690 <ul>
6691 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
6692     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
6693     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
6694 </ul>
6695
6696 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6697
6698 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
6699 <ul>
6700 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
6701 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
6702 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
6703 </ul>
6704
6705 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
6706
6707 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
6708
6709 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6710
6711 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6712
6713       </div>
6714       <div class="tags">
6715
6716
6717         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6718
6719
6720       </div>
6721     </div>
6722     <div class="padding"></div>
6723
6724     <div class="entry">
6725       <div class="title">
6726         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
6727       </div>
6728       <div class="date">
6729         16th April 2013
6730       </div>
6731       <div class="body">
6732         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
6733 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
6734 Details about the gathering can be found
6735 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
6736 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
6737 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
6738 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
6739 weekend.</p>
6740
6741 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
6742 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
6743 Edu release.</p>
6744
6745 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
6746
6747       </div>
6748       <div class="tags">
6749
6750
6751         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6752
6753
6754       </div>
6755     </div>
6756     <div class="padding"></div>
6757
6758     <div class="entry">
6759       <div class="title">
6760         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
6761       </div>
6762       <div class="date">
6763          3rd April 2013
6764       </div>
6765       <div class="body">
6766         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
6767 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
6768 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
6769 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
6770
6771 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
6772 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
6773 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
6774 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
6775 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
6776 BTS. :)</p>
6777
6778       </div>
6779       <div class="tags">
6780
6781
6782         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6783
6784
6785       </div>
6786     </div>
6787     <div class="padding"></div>
6788
6789     <div class="entry">
6790       <div class="title">
6791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
6792       </div>
6793       <div class="date">
6794         26th March 2013
6795       </div>
6796       <div class="body">
6797         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
6798 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
6799 font you use when printing.</p>
6800
6801 <p>Three years ago,
6802 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
6803 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
6804 changed their default front from
6805 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
6806 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
6807 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
6808 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
6809 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
6810 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
6811 prints.</p>
6812
6813 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
6814 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
6815 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
6816 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
6817 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
6818 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
6819 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
6820 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
6821 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
6822 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
6823 depend on the documents printed.</p>
6824
6825 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
6826 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
6827 and save some money in the process.</p>
6828
6829 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
6830 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
6831 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
6832 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
6833 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
6834 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
6835 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
6836 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
6837 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
6838
6839       </div>
6840       <div class="tags">
6841
6842
6843         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6844
6845
6846       </div>
6847     </div>
6848     <div class="padding"></div>
6849
6850     <div class="entry">
6851       <div class="title">
6852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
6853       </div>
6854       <div class="date">
6855         24th March 2013
6856       </div>
6857       <div class="body">
6858         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
6859 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
6860 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
6861 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
6862 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
6863 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
6864 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
6865 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
6866 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
6867 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
6868 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
6869 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
6870
6871 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
6872 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
6873 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
6874 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
6875 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
6876 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
6877 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
6878 all I had to do was to use the
6879 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
6880 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
6881 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
6882 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
6883 xsltproc/fop (aka
6884 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
6885 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
6886 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
6887 technical detail.</p>
6888
6889 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
6890 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
6891 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
6892 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
6893 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
6894 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
6895
6896 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
6897 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
6898 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
6899 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
6900 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
6901 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
6902 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
6903 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
6904 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
6905
6906 <p><blockquote><pre>
6907 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6908 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6909   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
6910     &lt;hr/&gt;
6911   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6912 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6913 </pre></blockquote></p>
6914
6915 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
6916
6917 <p><blockquote><pre>
6918 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6919 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6920   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
6921     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
6922       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
6923     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
6924   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6925 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6926 </pre></blockquote></p>
6927
6928 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
6929 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
6930 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
6931 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
6932 enough.</p>
6933
6934 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
6935 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
6936 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
6937 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
6938 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
6939 look like this:</p>
6940
6941 <p><blockquote><pre>
6942 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6943 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6944   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
6945     &lt;br/&gt;
6946   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6947 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6948 </pre></blockquote></p>
6949
6950 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
6951
6952 <p><blockquote><pre>
6953 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6954 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
6955   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
6956   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
6957     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
6958   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6959 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6960 </pre></blockquote></p>
6961
6962 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
6963 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
6964 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
6965 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
6966 page.</p>
6967
6968 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
6969 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
6970 github</a>
6971 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
6972 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
6973 days.</p>
6974
6975       </div>
6976       <div class="tags">
6977
6978
6979         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6980
6981
6982       </div>
6983     </div>
6984     <div class="padding"></div>
6985
6986     <div class="entry">
6987       <div class="title">
6988         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
6989       </div>
6990       <div class="date">
6991         17th March 2013
6992       </div>
6993       <div class="body">
6994         <p>Via
6995 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
6996 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
6997 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
6998 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
6999 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
7000 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
7001 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
7002
7003 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
7004 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
7005
7006 <blockquote>
7007 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
7008 </blockquote>
7009
7010 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
7011
7012 <blockquote>
7013 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
7014 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
7015 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
7016 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
7017 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
7018 </blockquote>
7019
7020 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
7021 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
7022 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
7023 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
7024
7025 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
7026 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
7027
7028 <blockquote>
7029 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
7030 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
7031 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
7032 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
7033 </blockquote>
7034
7035 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
7036 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
7037 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
7038 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
7039 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
7040
7041 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
7042 embedding:</p>
7043
7044 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
7045
7046       </div>
7047       <div class="tags">
7048
7049
7050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7051
7052
7053       </div>
7054     </div>
7055     <div class="padding"></div>
7056
7057     <div class="entry">
7058       <div class="title">
7059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
7060       </div>
7061       <div class="date">
7062          8th March 2013
7063       </div>
7064       <div class="body">
7065         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
7066 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
7067 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
7068 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
7069 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
7070 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
7071 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
7072
7073 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
7074
7075 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
7076 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
7077
7078 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
7079 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
7080 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
7081 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
7082 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
7083 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
7084
7085 <p>Images are available for download at
7086 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
7087
7088 <p>md5sums:
7089 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
7090 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
7091 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
7092
7093 <p>sha1sums:
7094 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
7095 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
7096 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
7097
7098 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
7099
7100 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
7101 2013-03-03:</p>
7102
7103 <ul>
7104   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
7105   <ul>
7106         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
7107         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
7108   </ul></li>
7109   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
7110   <ul>
7111         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
7112         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
7113   </ul></li>
7114   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
7115      <ul>
7116         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
7117         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
7118         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
7119                 Closes: #664596</li>
7120         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
7121                 Closes: #664976</li>
7122         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
7123            <ul>
7124                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
7125                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
7126            </ul></li>
7127         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
7128            <ul>
7129                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
7130                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
7131                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
7132                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
7133                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
7134            </ul></li>
7135         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
7136     </ul>
7137   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
7138     <ul>
7139         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
7140     </ul></li>
7141 </ul>
7142
7143 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
7144 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
7145 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
7146 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
7147
7148 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
7149 mailinglist
7150 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
7151 </p></blockquote>
7152
7153 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
7154
7155       </div>
7156       <div class="tags">
7157
7158
7159         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7160
7161
7162       </div>
7163     </div>
7164     <div class="padding"></div>
7165
7166     <div class="entry">
7167       <div class="title">
7168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
7169       </div>
7170       <div class="date">
7171          3rd March 2013
7172       </div>
7173       <div class="body">
7174         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
7175 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
7176 support using
7177 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
7178 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
7179 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
7180 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
7181 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
7182 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
7183 using the GNU LGPL, and
7184 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
7185
7186 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
7187 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
7188 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
7189 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
7190 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
7191 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
7192
7193 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
7194 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
7195 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
7196 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
7197 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
7198 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
7199 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
7200 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
7201 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
7202 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
7203 signal distribution is handled using
7204 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
7205 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
7206 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
7207 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
7208 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
7209 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
7210 them up a bit more first.</p>
7211
7212 <p>The development is coordinated on the
7213 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
7214 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
7215 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
7216 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
7217 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
7218 development.</p>
7219
7220       </div>
7221       <div class="tags">
7222
7223
7224         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7225
7226
7227       </div>
7228     </div>
7229     <div class="padding"></div>
7230
7231     <div class="entry">
7232       <div class="title">
7233         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
7234       </div>
7235       <div class="date">
7236         27th February 2013
7237       </div>
7238       <div class="body">
7239         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
7240 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
7241 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
7242 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
7243 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
7244 (where I am the chair of the board) and
7245 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
7246 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
7247 GNU», with this description:
7248
7249 <p><blockquote>
7250 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
7251 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
7252 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
7253 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
7254 </blockquote></p>
7255
7256 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
7257 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
7258 am really curious how many will show up.  See
7259 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
7260 page</a> for the location details.</p>
7261
7262       </div>
7263       <div class="tags">
7264
7265
7266         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7267
7268
7269       </div>
7270     </div>
7271     <div class="padding"></div>
7272
7273     <div class="entry">
7274       <div class="title">
7275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
7276       </div>
7277       <div class="date">
7278         15th February 2013
7279       </div>
7280       <div class="body">
7281         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
7282 now a great source of free maps available from
7283 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
7284 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
7285 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
7286 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
7287 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
7288 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
7289 page for descriptions).</p>
7290
7291 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
7292 map you can just edit the
7293 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
7294 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
7295
7296       </div>
7297       <div class="tags">
7298
7299
7300         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
7301
7302
7303       </div>
7304     </div>
7305     <div class="padding"></div>
7306
7307     <div class="entry">
7308       <div class="title">
7309         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
7310       </div>
7311       <div class="date">
7312         12th February 2013
7313       </div>
7314       <div class="body">
7315         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
7316 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
7317 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
7318 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
7319 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
7320 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
7321 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
7322 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
7323 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
7324 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
7325 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
7326 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
7327 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
7328 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
7329 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
7330 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
7331
7332 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
7333 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
7334 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
7335 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
7336 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
7337 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
7338 fields:</p>
7339
7340 <p><pre>
7341 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
7342 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
7343 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
7344 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
7345 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
7346 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
7347 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
7348 </pre></p>
7349
7350 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
7351 answer regarding
7352 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
7353 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
7354 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
7355 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
7356
7357 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
7358
7359 <p><pre>
7360 BEGIN:VCARD
7361 VERSION:2.1
7362 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
7363 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
7364 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
7365 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
7366 REV:20130212T095000Z
7367 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
7368 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
7369 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
7370 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
7371 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
7372 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
7373 END:VCARD
7374 </pre></p>
7375
7376 <p>The resulting QR code created using
7377 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
7378 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
7379 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
7380 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
7381 system.</p>
7382
7383 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
7384
7385 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
7386 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
7387 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
7388 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
7389
7390 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
7391 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
7392
7393       </div>
7394       <div class="tags">
7395
7396
7397         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7398
7399
7400       </div>
7401     </div>
7402     <div class="padding"></div>
7403
7404     <div class="entry">
7405       <div class="title">
7406         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
7407       </div>
7408       <div class="date">
7409         10th February 2013
7410       </div>
7411       <div class="body">
7412         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
7413
7414 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
7415 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
7416 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
7417 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
7418 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
7419 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
7420 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
7421 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
7422 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
7423 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
7424 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
7425
7426 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
7427 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
7428 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
7429 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
7430 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
7431 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
7432 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
7433 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
7434 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
7435 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
7436 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
7437 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
7438 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
7439 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
7440 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
7441 ones own
7442 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
7443 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
7444 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
7445 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
7446 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
7447 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
7448 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
7449 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
7450 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
7451 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
7452 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
7453
7454 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
7455 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
7456 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
7457 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
7458 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
7459 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
7460
7461 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
7462 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
7463 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
7464
7465       </div>
7466       <div class="tags">
7467
7468
7469         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7470
7471
7472       </div>
7473     </div>
7474     <div class="padding"></div>
7475
7476     <div class="entry">
7477       <div class="title">
7478         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
7479       </div>
7480       <div class="date">
7481          2nd February 2013
7482       </div>
7483       <div class="body">
7484         <p>My
7485 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
7486 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
7487 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
7488 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
7489 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
7490 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
7491 version too.</p>
7492
7493 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
7494 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
7495 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
7496 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
7497 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
7498 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
7499 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
7500 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
7501
7502 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
7503 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
7504 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
7505 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
7506 it. :)</p>
7507
7508 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7509 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7510 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7511
7512       </div>
7513       <div class="tags">
7514
7515
7516         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>.
7517
7518
7519       </div>
7520     </div>
7521     <div class="padding"></div>
7522
7523     <div class="entry">
7524       <div class="title">
7525         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
7526       </div>
7527       <div class="date">
7528         22nd January 2013
7529       </div>
7530       <div class="body">
7531         <p>Yesterday, I
7532 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
7533 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
7534 pluggable hardware devices, which I
7535 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
7536 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
7537 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
7538 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
7539 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
7540 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
7541 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
7542 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
7543 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
7544 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
7545
7546 <pre>
7547 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
7548 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
7549 </pre>
7550
7551 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
7552 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
7553 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
7554 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
7555
7556 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
7557 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
7558 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
7559 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
7560 word.</p>
7561
7562 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
7563 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
7564 process.</p>
7565
7566 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
7567 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
7568
7569       </div>
7570       <div class="tags">
7571
7572
7573         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7574
7575
7576       </div>
7577     </div>
7578     <div class="padding"></div>
7579
7580     <div class="entry">
7581       <div class="title">
7582         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
7583       </div>
7584       <div class="date">
7585         21st January 2013
7586       </div>
7587       <div class="body">
7588         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
7589 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
7590 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
7591 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
7592 it, fetch the
7593 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
7594 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
7595 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
7596 autostart script.</p>
7597
7598 <p>The design is simple:</p>
7599
7600 <ul>
7601
7602 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
7603 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
7604
7605 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
7606 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
7607 initially did.</li>
7608
7609 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
7610 the APT database, a database
7611 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
7612 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
7613
7614 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
7615 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
7616 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
7617 package or packages.</li>
7618
7619 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
7620 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
7621
7622 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
7623 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
7624
7625 </ul>
7626
7627 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
7628 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
7629 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
7630 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
7631
7632 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
7633 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
7634 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
7635 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
7636 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
7637
7638 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
7639 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
7640 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
7641 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
7642 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
7643 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
7644 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
7645 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
7646
7647 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
7648 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
7649 '<tt>svn checkout
7650 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
7651 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
7652 devscripts package.</p>
7653
7654 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
7655 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
7656 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
7657 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
7658 instructions</a> for details.</p>
7659
7660       </div>
7661       <div class="tags">
7662
7663
7664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7665
7666
7667       </div>
7668     </div>
7669     <div class="padding"></div>
7670
7671     <div class="entry">
7672       <div class="title">
7673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
7674       </div>
7675       <div class="date">
7676         19th January 2013
7677       </div>
7678       <div class="body">
7679         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
7680 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
7681 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
7682 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
7683 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
7684 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
7685 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
7686 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
7687 not a durable solution.
7688
7689 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
7690 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
7691
7692 <ul>
7693
7694 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
7695   than A4).</li>
7696 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
7697 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
7698 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
7699 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
7700 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
7701 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
7702 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
7703 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
7704 size).</li>
7705 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
7706   X.org packages.</li>
7707 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
7708   the time).
7709
7710 </ul>
7711
7712 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
7713 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
7714 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
7715 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
7716 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
7717 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
7718 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
7719 still be useful.</p>
7720
7721 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
7722 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
7723 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
7724 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
7725 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
7726 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
7727
7728       </div>
7729       <div class="tags">
7730
7731
7732         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>.
7733
7734
7735       </div>
7736     </div>
7737     <div class="padding"></div>
7738
7739     <div class="entry">
7740       <div class="title">
7741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
7742       </div>
7743       <div class="date">
7744         18th January 2013
7745       </div>
7746       <div class="body">
7747         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
7748 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
7749 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
7750 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
7751 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
7752 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
7753 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
7754
7755 <pre>
7756 #!/usr/bin/python
7757 import sys
7758 import apt
7759 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7760     cache = apt.Cache()
7761     cache.open(None)
7762     thepkgs = []
7763     for pkg in cache:
7764         version = pkg.candidate
7765         if version is None:
7766             version = pkg.installed
7767         if version is None:
7768             continue
7769         record = version.record
7770         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
7771             continue
7772         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
7773         for t in mime_types:
7774             t = t.rstrip().strip()
7775             if t == mimetype:
7776                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
7777     return thepkgs
7778 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
7779 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
7780     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
7781 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
7782 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7783     print "  %s" %pkg
7784 </pre>
7785
7786 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
7787
7788 <pre>
7789 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
7790 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
7791   gecko-mediaplayer
7792 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
7793 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
7794   browser-plugin-gnash
7795 %
7796 </pre>
7797
7798 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
7799 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
7800 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
7801 anyone working on adding it?</p>
7802
7803 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
7804 request for icweasel support for this feature is
7805 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
7806 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
7807 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
7808 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
7809
7810       </div>
7811       <div class="tags">
7812
7813
7814         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>.
7815
7816
7817       </div>
7818     </div>
7819     <div class="padding"></div>
7820
7821     <div class="entry">
7822       <div class="title">
7823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
7824       </div>
7825       <div class="date">
7826         16th January 2013
7827       </div>
7828       <div class="body">
7829         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
7830 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
7831 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
7832 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
7833 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
7834 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
7835 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
7836 downloaded by the browser.</p>
7837
7838 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
7839 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
7840 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
7841 can be found on the
7842 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
7843 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
7844 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
7845 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
7846 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
7847
7848 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
7849
7850 <pre>
7851   count MIME type
7852   ----- -----------------------
7853      32 text/plain
7854      30 audio/mpeg
7855      29 image/png
7856      28 image/jpeg
7857      27 application/ogg
7858      26 audio/x-mp3
7859      25 image/tiff
7860      25 image/gif
7861      22 image/bmp
7862      22 audio/x-wav
7863      20 audio/x-flac
7864      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7865      18 video/x-ms-asf
7866      18 audio/x-musepack
7867      18 audio/x-mpeg
7868      18 application/x-ogg
7869      17 video/mpeg
7870      17 audio/x-scpls
7871      17 audio/ogg
7872      16 video/x-ms-wmv
7873 </pre>
7874
7875 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
7876
7877 <pre>
7878   count MIME type
7879   ----- -----------------------
7880      33 text/plain
7881      32 image/png
7882      32 image/jpeg
7883      29 audio/mpeg
7884      27 image/gif
7885      26 image/tiff
7886      26 application/ogg
7887      25 audio/x-mp3
7888      22 image/bmp
7889      21 audio/x-wav
7890      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7891      19 audio/x-mpeg
7892      18 video/mpeg
7893      18 audio/x-scpls
7894      18 audio/x-flac
7895      18 application/x-ogg
7896      17 video/x-ms-asf
7897      17 text/html
7898      17 audio/x-musepack
7899      16 image/x-xbitmap
7900 </pre>
7901
7902 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
7903
7904 <pre>
7905   count MIME type
7906   ----- -----------------------
7907      31 text/plain
7908      31 image/png
7909      31 image/jpeg
7910      29 audio/mpeg
7911      28 application/ogg
7912      27 image/gif
7913      26 image/tiff
7914      26 audio/x-mp3
7915      23 audio/x-wav
7916      22 image/bmp
7917      21 audio/x-flac
7918      20 audio/x-mpegurl
7919      19 audio/x-mpeg
7920      18 video/x-ms-asf
7921      18 video/mpeg
7922      18 audio/x-scpls
7923      18 application/x-ogg
7924      17 audio/x-musepack
7925      16 video/x-ms-wmv
7926      16 video/x-msvideo
7927 </pre>
7928
7929 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
7930 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
7931 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
7932 issues.</p>
7933
7934 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
7935 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
7936
7937       </div>
7938       <div class="tags">
7939
7940
7941         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>.
7942
7943
7944       </div>
7945     </div>
7946     <div class="padding"></div>
7947
7948     <div class="entry">
7949       <div class="title">
7950         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
7951       </div>
7952       <div class="date">
7953         15th January 2013
7954       </div>
7955       <div class="body">
7956         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
7957 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
7958 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
7959 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
7960 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
7961 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
7962 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
7963 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
7964 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
7965 packages.</p>
7966
7967 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
7968 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
7969 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
7970 modalias.</p>
7971
7972 <p><blockquote>
7973 Package: package-name
7974 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
7975 </blockquote></p>
7976
7977 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
7978 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
7979
7980 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
7981 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
7982
7983 <p><blockquote>
7984 Package: cheese
7985 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
7986 </blockquote></p>
7987
7988 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
7989 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
7990
7991 <p><blockquote>
7992 Package: pcmciautils
7993 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
7994 </blockquote></p>
7995
7996 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
7997 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
7998
7999 <p><blockquote>
8000 Package: colorhug-client
8001 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
8002 </blockquote></p>
8003
8004 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
8005 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
8006 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
8007
8008 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
8009 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
8010 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
8011 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
8012 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
8013 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
8014 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
8015 Raring.</p>
8016
8017 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
8018 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
8019 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
8020 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
8021 try the
8022 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
8023 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
8024 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
8025 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
8026
8027 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
8028 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
8029
8030 <p><blockquote>
8031 % ./hw-support-lookup
8032 <br>yubikey-personalization
8033 <br>%
8034 </blockquote></p>
8035
8036 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
8037 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
8038
8039 <p><blockquote>
8040 % ./hw-support-lookup
8041 <br>pcmciautils
8042 <br>%
8043 </blockquote></p>
8044
8045 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
8046 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
8047 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
8048
8049 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
8050 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
8051 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
8052 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
8053 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
8054 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
8055 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
8056 see if it work.</p>
8057
8058 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8059 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8060 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8061 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8062
8063       </div>
8064       <div class="tags">
8065
8066
8067         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8068
8069
8070       </div>
8071     </div>
8072     <div class="padding"></div>
8073
8074     <div class="entry">
8075       <div class="title">
8076         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
8077       </div>
8078       <div class="date">
8079         14th January 2013
8080       </div>
8081       <div class="body">
8082         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
8083 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
8084 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
8085 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
8086 in
8087 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8088 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
8089
8090 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
8091
8092 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
8093 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
8094 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
8095 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
8096 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
8097 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
8098
8099 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
8100 this shell script:</p>
8101
8102 <pre>
8103 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
8104 </pre>
8105
8106 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
8107 using modinfo:</p>
8108
8109 <pre>
8110 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
8111 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
8112 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
8113 %
8114 </pre>
8115
8116 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
8117
8118 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
8119 Bridge memory controller:</p>
8120
8121 <p><blockquote>
8122 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
8123 </blockquote></p>
8124
8125 <p>This represent these values:</p>
8126
8127 <pre>
8128  v   00008086  (vendor)
8129  d   00002770  (device)
8130  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
8131  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
8132  bc  06        (bus class)
8133  sc  00        (bus subclass)
8134  i   00        (interface)
8135 </pre>
8136
8137 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
8138 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
8139 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
8140 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
8141
8142 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
8143 means.</p>
8144
8145 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
8146
8147 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
8148 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
8149
8150 <p><blockquote>
8151 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
8152 </blockquote></p>
8153
8154 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
8155
8156 <pre>
8157  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
8158  p    0001  (device product)
8159  d    0206  (bcddevice)
8160  dc     09  (device class)
8161  dsc    00  (device subclass)
8162  dp     00  (device protocol)
8163  ic     09  (interface class)
8164  isc    00  (interface subclass)
8165  ip     00  (interface protocol)
8166 </pre>
8167
8168 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
8169 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
8170 these alias entries show up:</p>
8171
8172 <p><blockquote>
8173 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
8174 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
8175 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
8176 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
8177 </blockquote></p>
8178
8179 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
8180 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
8181 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
8182
8183 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
8184
8185 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
8186 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
8187
8188 <p><blockquote>
8189 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8190 </blockquote></p>
8191
8192 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
8193
8194 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
8195
8196 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
8197 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
8198 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
8199
8200 <p><blockquote>
8201 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
8202 </blockquote></p>
8203
8204 <p>The values present are</p>
8205
8206 <pre>
8207  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
8208  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
8209  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
8210  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
8211  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
8212  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
8213  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
8214  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
8215  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
8216  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
8217  ct   10             (chassis type)
8218  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
8219 </pre>
8220
8221 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
8222 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
8223
8224 <pre>
8225   3 Desktop
8226   4 Low Profile Desktop
8227   5 Pizza Box
8228   6 Mini Tower
8229   7 Tower
8230   8 Portable
8231   9 Laptop
8232  10 Notebook
8233  11 Hand Held
8234  12 Docking Station
8235  13 All In One
8236  14 Sub Notebook
8237  15 Space-saving
8238  16 Lunch Box
8239  17 Main Server Chassis
8240  18 Expansion Chassis
8241  19 Sub Chassis
8242  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
8243  21 Peripheral Chassis
8244  22 RAID Chassis
8245  23 Rack Mount Chassis
8246  24 Sealed-case PC
8247  25 Multi-system
8248  26 CompactPCI
8249  27 AdvancedTCA
8250  28 Blade
8251  29 Blade Enclosing
8252 </pre>
8253
8254 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
8255 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
8256 claim it is a desktop.</p>
8257
8258 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
8259
8260 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
8261 test machine:</p>
8262
8263 <p><blockquote>
8264 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
8265 </blockquote></p>
8266
8267 <p>The values present are</p>
8268
8269 <pre>
8270   ty  01  (type)
8271   pr  00  (prototype)
8272   id  00  (id)
8273   ex  00  (extra)
8274 </pre>
8275
8276 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
8277 the valid values are.</p>
8278
8279 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
8280
8281 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
8282 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
8283 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
8284 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
8285 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
8286 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
8287 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
8288
8289 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
8290
8291 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
8292 one can use the following shell script:</p>
8293
8294 <pre>
8295   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
8296     echo "$id" ; \
8297     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
8298   done
8299 </pre>
8300
8301 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
8302 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
8303
8304 <pre>
8305   acpi:ACPI0003:
8306     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
8307   acpi:device:
8308   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
8309   acpi:IBM0068:
8310     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
8311     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
8312     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
8313     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
8314   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8315     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
8316     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
8317     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
8318   [...]
8319 </pre>
8320
8321 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8322 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8323 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8324 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8325
8326 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
8327 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
8328 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
8329
8330       </div>
8331       <div class="tags">
8332
8333
8334         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8335
8336
8337       </div>
8338     </div>
8339     <div class="padding"></div>
8340
8341     <div class="entry">
8342       <div class="title">
8343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
8344       </div>
8345       <div class="date">
8346         10th January 2013
8347       </div>
8348       <div class="body">
8349         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
8350 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
8351 Launcher and updated the Debian package
8352 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
8353 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
8354 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
8355 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
8356 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
8357 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
8358 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
8359 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
8360 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
8361 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
8362 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
8363 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
8364 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
8365 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
8366 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
8367
8368       </div>
8369       <div class="tags">
8370
8371
8372         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8373
8374
8375       </div>
8376     </div>
8377     <div class="padding"></div>
8378
8379     <div class="entry">
8380       <div class="title">
8381         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
8382       </div>
8383       <div class="date">
8384          9th January 2013
8385       </div>
8386       <div class="body">
8387         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
8388 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
8389 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
8390 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
8391 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
8392 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
8393 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
8394 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
8395 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
8396 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
8397 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
8398
8399 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
8400 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
8401 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
8402 simple:
8403
8404 <ul>
8405
8406 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
8407   starting when a user log in.</li>
8408
8409 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
8410   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
8411
8412 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
8413   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
8414   packages.</li>
8415
8416 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
8417   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
8418
8419 </ul>
8420
8421 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
8422 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
8423 discover database to find packages and
8424 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
8425 packages.</p>
8426
8427 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
8428 draft package is now checked into
8429 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8430 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
8431 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
8432 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
8433 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
8434 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
8435 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
8436 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
8437 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
8438 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
8439 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
8440 because of the freeze).</p>
8441
8442 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
8443 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
8444 inserted):</p>
8445
8446 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
8447
8448 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
8449 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
8450 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
8451
8452 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
8453 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
8454 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
8455 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
8456 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
8457 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
8458 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
8459
8460 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
8461 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
8462 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
8463 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
8464 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
8465 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
8466 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
8467 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
8468 not be installed?</p>
8469
8470 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
8471 please send me an email. :)</p>
8472
8473       </div>
8474       <div class="tags">
8475
8476
8477         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8478
8479
8480       </div>
8481     </div>
8482     <div class="padding"></div>
8483
8484     <div class="entry">
8485       <div class="title">
8486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
8487       </div>
8488       <div class="date">
8489          2nd January 2013
8490       </div>
8491       <div class="body">
8492         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
8493 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
8494 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
8495 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
8496 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
8497 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
8498 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
8499 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
8500 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
8501 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
8502
8503 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
8504 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
8505 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
8506
8507       </div>
8508       <div class="tags">
8509
8510
8511         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8512
8513
8514       </div>
8515     </div>
8516     <div class="padding"></div>
8517
8518     <div class="entry">
8519       <div class="title">
8520         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
8521       </div>
8522       <div class="date">
8523         28th December 2012
8524       </div>
8525       <div class="body">
8526         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
8527 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
8528 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
8529 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
8530 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
8531 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
8532 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
8533 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
8534 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
8535 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
8536 followed by many others. :)</p>
8537
8538 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
8539 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
8540 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
8541 you want to donate to the project.</p>
8542
8543       </div>
8544       <div class="tags">
8545
8546
8547         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8548
8549
8550       </div>
8551     </div>
8552     <div class="padding"></div>
8553
8554     <div class="entry">
8555       <div class="title">
8556         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
8557       </div>
8558       <div class="date">
8559         25th December 2012
8560       </div>
8561       <div class="body">
8562         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
8563 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
8564
8565 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
8566 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
8567 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
8568 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
8569 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
8570 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
8571 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
8572 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
8573 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
8574 name.</p>
8575
8576 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
8577 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
8578 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
8579
8580 <blockquote><pre>
8581 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
8582 cd bitcoin
8583 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
8584 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
8585 </pre></blockquote>
8586
8587 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
8588 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
8589 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
8590 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
8591 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
8592 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
8593 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
8594 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
8595 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
8596
8597 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8598 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8599 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8600
8601       </div>
8602       <div class="tags">
8603
8604
8605         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>.
8606
8607
8608       </div>
8609     </div>
8610     <div class="padding"></div>
8611
8612     <div class="entry">
8613       <div class="title">
8614         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
8615       </div>
8616       <div class="date">
8617         21st December 2012
8618       </div>
8619       <div class="body">
8620         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
8621 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
8622 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
8623 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
8624 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
8625 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
8626 is now maintained by a
8627 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
8628 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
8629 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
8630 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
8631 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
8632 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
8633 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
8634 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
8635 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
8636 Corallo in a
8637 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
8638 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
8639 Debian package.</p>
8640
8641 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
8642 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
8643 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
8644 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
8645 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
8646 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
8647 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
8648 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
8649 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
8650 new version to unstable.
8651
8652 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
8653 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
8654 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
8655 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
8656 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
8657 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
8658 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
8659 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
8660 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
8661 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
8662 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
8663 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
8664 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
8665 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
8666 have not tested them.</p>
8667
8668 <p>My
8669 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
8670 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
8671 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
8672 years ago, as can be
8673 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
8674 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
8675 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
8676 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
8677 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
8678 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
8679 the same address as last time,
8680 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8681
8682       </div>
8683       <div class="tags">
8684
8685
8686         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>.
8687
8688
8689       </div>
8690     </div>
8691     <div class="padding"></div>
8692
8693     <div class="entry">
8694       <div class="title">
8695         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
8696       </div>
8697       <div class="date">
8698         18th December 2012
8699       </div>
8700       <div class="body">
8701         <p>A few days ago I came across
8702 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
8703 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
8704 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
8705 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
8706 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
8707 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
8708 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
8709 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
8710 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
8711
8712 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
8713 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
8714 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
8715 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
8716
8717 <blockquote><pre>
8718 2004-05-27 Book Store
8719       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
8720       Liabilities:Visa
8721 </pre></blockquote>
8722
8723 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
8724 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
8725 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
8726 Spang</a>,
8727 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
8728 Keen</a>,
8729 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
8730 Cantino</a> and
8731 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
8732 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
8733 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
8734 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
8735 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
8736
8737 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
8738 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
8739 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
8740 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
8741 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
8742
8743 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
8744 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
8745 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
8746 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
8747 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
8748 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
8749 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
8750 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
8751 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
8752
8753       </div>
8754       <div class="tags">
8755
8756
8757         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8758
8759
8760       </div>
8761     </div>
8762     <div class="padding"></div>
8763
8764     <div class="entry">
8765       <div class="title">
8766         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
8767       </div>
8768       <div class="date">
8769          6th December 2012
8770       </div>
8771       <div class="body">
8772         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
8773 Oslo</a>, we use the
8774 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
8775 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
8776 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
8777 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
8778 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
8779 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
8780 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
8781 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
8782 Python.</p>
8783
8784 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
8785 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
8786 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
8787 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
8788 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
8789 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
8790
8791 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
8792 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
8793 user currently logged in:</p>
8794
8795 <blockquote><pre>
8796 #!/usr/bin/env python
8797 import getpass
8798 import xmlrpclib
8799 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
8800 username = getpass.getuser()
8801 password = getpass.getpass()
8802 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
8803 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
8804 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
8805 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
8806 result = server.logout(sessionid)
8807 print result
8808 </pre></blockquote>
8809
8810 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
8811 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
8812
8813       </div>
8814       <div class="tags">
8815
8816
8817         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
8818
8819
8820       </div>
8821     </div>
8822     <div class="padding"></div>
8823
8824     <div class="entry">
8825       <div class="title">
8826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
8827       </div>
8828       <div class="date">
8829         17th November 2012
8830       </div>
8831       <div class="body">
8832         <p>While working on a
8833 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
8834 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
8835 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
8836 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
8837 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
8838 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
8839
8840 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
8841 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
8842 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
8843 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
8844 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
8845 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
8846 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
8847 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
8848 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
8849 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
8850 arguments.</p>
8851
8852 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
8853 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
8854 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
8855 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
8856 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
8857 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
8858 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
8859 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
8860
8861 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
8862 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
8863 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
8864 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
8865 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
8866 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
8867 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
8868 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
8869 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
8870 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
8871 correct right holder.</p>
8872
8873 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
8874 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
8875 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
8876 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
8877 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
8878 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
8879 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
8880 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
8881 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
8882 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
8883 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
8884 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
8885 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
8886 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
8887
8888 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
8889 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
8890 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
8891
8892 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
8893 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
8894
8895       </div>
8896       <div class="tags">
8897
8898
8899         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8900
8901
8902       </div>
8903     </div>
8904     <div class="padding"></div>
8905
8906     <div class="entry">
8907       <div class="title">
8908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
8909       </div>
8910       <div class="date">
8911         14th November 2012
8912       </div>
8913       <div class="body">
8914         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
8915 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8916 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
8917 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
8918 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
8919 the people behind the German
8920 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
8921 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
8922 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
8923
8924 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8925
8926 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
8927 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
8928 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
8929
8930 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
8931 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
8932 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
8933 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
8934 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
8935 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
8936
8937 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
8938 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
8939 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
8940 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
8941 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
8942 relationship management and the communication processes in the
8943 project.</p>
8944
8945 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
8946 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
8947 and a yoga teacher.</p>
8948
8949 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8950 project?</strong></p>
8951
8952 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
8953
8954 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
8955 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
8956 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
8957 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
8958 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
8959 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
8960 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
8961 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
8962 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
8963 parents.</p>
8964
8965 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
8966 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
8967 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
8968 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
8969 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
8970 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
8971 Germany.</p>
8972
8973 <p>For information about our school project you can read
8974 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
8975 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
8976
8977 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8978 Edu?</strong></p>
8979
8980 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
8981 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
8982
8983 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
8984 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
8985 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
8986 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
8987 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
8988 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
8989 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
8990 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
8991 teachers, parents...</p>
8992
8993 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8994 Edu?</strong></p>
8995
8996 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
8997 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
8998
8999 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
9000 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
9001 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
9002 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
9003 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9004
9005 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
9006 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
9007 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
9008 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
9009 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
9010 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
9011 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9012
9013 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9014
9015 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
9016 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
9017 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
9018 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
9019
9020 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9021 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9022
9023 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
9024 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
9025 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
9026 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
9027 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
9028
9029 <ul>
9030
9031 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
9032 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
9033 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
9034
9035 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
9036 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
9037 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
9038 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
9039 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
9040 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
9041 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
9042
9043 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
9044 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
9045 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
9046 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
9047
9048 </ul>
9049
9050       </div>
9051       <div class="tags">
9052
9053
9054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9055
9056
9057       </div>
9058     </div>
9059     <div class="padding"></div>
9060
9061     <div class="entry">
9062       <div class="title">
9063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
9064       </div>
9065       <div class="date">
9066          4th November 2012
9067       </div>
9068       <div class="body">
9069         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
9070 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
9071 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
9072 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
9073 see how a member of the bitcoin community
9074 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
9075 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
9076 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
9077 competition.  My thoughts go to the
9078 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
9079 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
9080 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
9081 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
9082 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
9083
9084 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
9085 that the community already seem to have
9086 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
9087 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
9088 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
9089 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
9090 wealth is available.</p>
9091
9092       </div>
9093       <div class="tags">
9094
9095
9096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9097
9098
9099       </div>
9100     </div>
9101     <div class="padding"></div>
9102
9103     <div class="entry">
9104       <div class="title">
9105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
9106       </div>
9107       <div class="date">
9108         26th October 2012
9109       </div>
9110       <div class="body">
9111         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
9112 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
9113 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
9114 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
9115 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
9116 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
9117 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
9118 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
9119 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
9120 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
9121 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
9122 it every time.</p>
9123
9124 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
9125 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
9126 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
9127 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
9128 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
9129 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
9130 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
9131 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
9132 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
9133 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
9134 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
9135 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
9136
9137 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
9138 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
9139 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
9140 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
9141 article: First the unplanned outage:
9142
9143 <blockquote><pre>
9144 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
9145 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
9146 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
9147 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
9148 Duration:    40 minutes
9149 Scope:       Exchange 2003
9150 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
9151              a cluster failover.
9152
9153 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
9154              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
9155 Technician:  [xxx]
9156 </pre></blockquote>
9157
9158 Next the planned outage:
9159
9160 <blockquote><pre>
9161 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
9162 Severity:    Major (Planned)
9163 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
9164 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
9165 Duration:    10 hours
9166 Scope:       H2 Transport
9167 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
9168              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
9169              4510s.
9170 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
9171              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
9172              connectivity.
9173 Technician:  [xxx]
9174 </pre></blockquote>
9175
9176 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
9177 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
9178 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
9179 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
9180 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
9181 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
9182 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
9183
9184 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
9185 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
9186 university too.  We do register
9187 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
9188 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
9189 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
9190 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
9191 for other sites to consider too?</p>
9192
9193       </div>
9194       <div class="tags">
9195
9196
9197         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9198
9199
9200       </div>
9201     </div>
9202     <div class="padding"></div>
9203
9204     <div class="entry">
9205       <div class="title">
9206         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
9207       </div>
9208       <div class="date">
9209         22nd October 2012
9210       </div>
9211       <div class="body">
9212         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
9213 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
9214 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
9215 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
9216 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
9217 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
9218 background information is available in Norwegian from
9219 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
9220 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
9221 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
9222 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
9223 willing to
9224 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
9225 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
9226 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
9227 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
9228 sounded like
9229 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
9230 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
9231 later.</p>
9232
9233 <p>And thought this action is
9234 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
9235 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
9236 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
9237 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
9238 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
9239 rights.</p>
9240
9241 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
9242 unacceptable terms.  For example
9243 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
9244 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
9245 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
9246 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
9247 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
9248
9249 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
9250 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
9251 restored the account of the user, as reported by
9252 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
9253 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
9254 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
9255 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
9256 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
9257 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
9258 reading two opinions from
9259 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
9260 Phipps</a> and
9261 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
9262 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
9263 details about the original story.</p>
9264
9265       </div>
9266       <div class="tags">
9267
9268
9269         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
9270
9271
9272       </div>
9273     </div>
9274     <div class="padding"></div>
9275
9276     <div class="entry">
9277       <div class="title">
9278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
9279       </div>
9280       <div class="date">
9281         18th October 2012
9282       </div>
9283       <div class="body">
9284         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
9285 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
9286 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
9287 across a marvellous drawing by
9288 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
9289 visualising some of what is going on.
9290
9291 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
9292 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
9293
9294 <blockquote>
9295 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
9296 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
9297 </blockquote>
9298
9299 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
9300 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
9301 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
9302 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
9303 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
9304 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
9305
9306       </div>
9307       <div class="tags">
9308
9309
9310         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9311
9312
9313       </div>
9314     </div>
9315     <div class="padding"></div>
9316
9317     <div class="entry">
9318       <div class="title">
9319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
9320       </div>
9321       <div class="date">
9322         12th October 2012
9323       </div>
9324       <div class="body">
9325         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
9326 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
9327 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
9328 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
9329 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
9330 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
9331 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
9332 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
9333 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
9334 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
9335 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
9336 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
9337 matter".</p>
9338
9339 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
9340 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
9341 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
9342 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
9343 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
9344 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
9345 to argue its side.</p>
9346
9347 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
9348 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
9349 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
9350 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
9351
9352 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
9353 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
9354 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
9355
9356       </div>
9357       <div class="tags">
9358
9359
9360         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
9361
9362
9363       </div>
9364     </div>
9365     <div class="padding"></div>
9366
9367     <div class="entry">
9368       <div class="title">
9369         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
9370       </div>
9371       <div class="date">
9372          3rd October 2012
9373       </div>
9374       <div class="body">
9375         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
9376 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
9377 the computer science book collection available in his local
9378 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
9379 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
9380 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
9381 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
9382 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
9383 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
9384 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
9385 recently published books.</p>
9386
9387 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
9388 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
9389 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
9390 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
9391 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
9392 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
9393 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
9394 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
9395 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
9396 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
9397 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
9398 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
9399 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
9400 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
9401 for the library that evening.</p>
9402
9403 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
9404 going to know that for example
9405 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
9406 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
9407 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
9408 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
9409 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
9410 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
9411 book right away.</p>
9412
9413       </div>
9414       <div class="tags">
9415
9416
9417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9418
9419
9420       </div>
9421     </div>
9422     <div class="padding"></div>
9423
9424     <div class="entry">
9425       <div class="title">
9426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
9427       </div>
9428       <div class="date">
9429         23rd September 2012
9430       </div>
9431       <div class="body">
9432         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
9433 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
9434 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
9435 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
9436 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
9437 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
9438
9439 When I started, I
9440 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
9441 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
9442 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
9443 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
9444 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
9445 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
9446 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
9447
9448 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
9449
9450 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
9451 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
9452 the project files currently available from
9453 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
9454
9455 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
9456 the updated
9457 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
9458 and
9459 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
9460 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
9461 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
9462 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
9463
9464       </div>
9465       <div class="tags">
9466
9467
9468         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9469
9470
9471       </div>
9472     </div>
9473     <div class="padding"></div>
9474
9475     <div class="entry">
9476       <div class="title">
9477         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
9478       </div>
9479       <div class="date">
9480         17th September 2012
9481       </div>
9482       <div class="body">
9483         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
9484 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9485 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
9486 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
9487 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
9488 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
9489 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
9490
9491 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9492
9493 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
9494 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
9495 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
9496 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
9497 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
9498 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
9499 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
9500 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
9501 training is anyway very important</p>
9502
9503 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
9504 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
9505 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
9506 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
9507 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
9508
9509 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9510 project?</strong></p>
9511
9512 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
9513 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
9514 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
9515 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
9516 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
9517 hole.</p>
9518
9519 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9520 Edu?</strong></p>
9521
9522 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
9523 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
9524 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
9525 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
9526 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
9527 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
9528 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
9529 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
9530 hassle.</p>
9531
9532 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9533 Edu?</strong></p>
9534
9535 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
9536 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
9537 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
9538 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
9539 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
9540 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
9541 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
9542 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
9543
9544 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9545
9546 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
9547 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
9548 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
9549 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
9550 has the same...</p>
9551
9552 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
9553 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
9554 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
9555 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
9556
9557 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9558 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9559
9560 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
9561 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
9562 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
9563
9564 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
9565 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
9566 don't.</p>
9567
9568 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
9569 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
9570 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
9571 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
9572 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
9573 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
9574 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
9575
9576       </div>
9577       <div class="tags">
9578
9579
9580         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9581
9582
9583       </div>
9584     </div>
9585     <div class="padding"></div>
9586
9587     <div class="entry">
9588       <div class="title">
9589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
9590       </div>
9591       <div class="date">
9592         15th September 2012
9593       </div>
9594       <div class="body">
9595         <p>After the
9596 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
9597 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
9598 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
9599 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
9600 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
9601 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
9602 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
9603 was
9604 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
9605 formal working group should be formed.</p>
9606
9607 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
9608 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
9609 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
9610 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
9611 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
9612 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
9613 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
9614 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
9615
9616 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
9617 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
9618 IETF.</p>
9619
9620       </div>
9621       <div class="tags">
9622
9623
9624         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9625
9626
9627       </div>
9628     </div>
9629     <div class="padding"></div>
9630
9631     <div class="entry">
9632       <div class="title">
9633         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
9634       </div>
9635       <div class="date">
9636         12th September 2012
9637       </div>
9638       <div class="body">
9639         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
9640 publication of of
9641 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
9642 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
9643 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
9644 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
9645 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
9646 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
9647 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
9648 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
9649 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
9650 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
9651
9652 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
9653 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
9654 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
9655 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
9656
9657 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
9658 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
9659
9660       </div>
9661       <div class="tags">
9662
9663
9664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9665
9666
9667       </div>
9668     </div>
9669     <div class="padding"></div>
9670
9671     <div class="entry">
9672       <div class="title">
9673         <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>
9674       </div>
9675       <div class="date">
9676          7th September 2012
9677       </div>
9678       <div class="body">
9679         <p>As I
9680 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
9681 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
9682 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
9683 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
9684 repository for the project</a>.</p>
9685
9686 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
9687 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
9688 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
9689 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
9690
9691 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
9692 PostScript formats at
9693 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
9694 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
9695
9696       </div>
9697       <div class="tags">
9698
9699
9700         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>.
9701
9702
9703       </div>
9704     </div>
9705     <div class="padding"></div>
9706
9707     <div class="entry">
9708       <div class="title">
9709         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
9710       </div>
9711       <div class="date">
9712         23rd August 2012
9713       </div>
9714       <div class="body">
9715         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
9716 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
9717 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
9718 revisit the great site
9719 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
9720 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
9721 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
9722
9723       </div>
9724       <div class="tags">
9725
9726
9727         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9728
9729
9730       </div>
9731     </div>
9732     <div class="padding"></div>
9733
9734     <div class="entry">
9735       <div class="title">
9736         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
9737       </div>
9738       <div class="date">
9739         17th August 2012
9740       </div>
9741       <div class="body">
9742         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
9743 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
9744 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
9745 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
9746 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
9747 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
9748 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
9749 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
9750 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
9751 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
9752 summer I
9753 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
9754 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
9755 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
9756
9757 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
9758 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
9759 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
9760 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
9761 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
9762 progress:</p>
9763
9764 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
9765
9766 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
9767 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
9768 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
9769 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
9770 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
9771 english version of the docbook source.</p>
9772
9773 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
9774 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
9775 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
9776 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
9777 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
9778 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
9779 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
9780 project files currently available from <a
9781 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
9782
9783 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
9784 the updated
9785 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
9786 and
9787 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
9788 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
9789 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
9790 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
9791
9792       </div>
9793       <div class="tags">
9794
9795
9796         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9797
9798
9799       </div>
9800     </div>
9801     <div class="padding"></div>
9802
9803     <div class="entry">
9804       <div class="title">
9805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
9806       </div>
9807       <div class="date">
9808         10th August 2012
9809       </div>
9810       <div class="body">
9811         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
9812 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
9813 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
9814 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
9815 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
9816 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
9817 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
9818 case for the language
9819 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
9820 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
9821
9822 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
9823 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
9824 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
9825 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
9826 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
9827
9828 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
9829 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
9830 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
9831 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
9832 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
9833 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
9834 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
9835 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
9836 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
9837 alias for 'nb'.</p>
9838
9839 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
9840 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
9841 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
9842 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
9843 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
9844 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
9845 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
9846 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
9847 at the same time. :(</p>
9848
9849 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
9850 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
9851 processors. :(</p>
9852
9853 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
9854
9855       </div>
9856       <div class="tags">
9857
9858
9859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9860
9861
9862       </div>
9863     </div>
9864     <div class="padding"></div>
9865
9866     <div class="entry">
9867       <div class="title">
9868         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
9869       </div>
9870       <div class="date">
9871         31st July 2012
9872       </div>
9873       <div class="body">
9874         <p>I tried to send this text to the
9875 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
9876 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
9877 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
9878 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
9879 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
9880 out.</p>
9881
9882 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
9883 learning curve at the moment.</p>
9884
9885 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
9886 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
9887 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
9888 available from
9889 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
9890 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
9891 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
9892 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
9893 Squeeze.</p>
9894
9895 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
9896 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
9897 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
9898 problems.</p>
9899
9900 <ul>
9901
9902 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
9903    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
9904    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
9905    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
9906    index references spanning several pages (See
9907    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
9908    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
9909    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
9910
9911 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
9912    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
9913    #683163</a>).</li>
9914
9915 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
9916    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
9917    footnote and text body, see
9918    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
9919    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
9920    refs listed are not right).</li>
9921
9922 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
9923
9924 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
9925    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
9926
9927 </ul>
9928
9929 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
9930 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
9931 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
9932
9933 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
9934
9935       </div>
9936       <div class="tags">
9937
9938
9939         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9940
9941
9942       </div>
9943     </div>
9944     <div class="padding"></div>
9945
9946     <div class="entry">
9947       <div class="title">
9948         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
9949       </div>
9950       <div class="date">
9951         21st July 2012
9952       </div>
9953       <div class="body">
9954         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
9955 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
9956 norwegian version</a> of the book
9957 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
9958 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
9959 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
9960 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
9961 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
9962
9963 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
9964 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
9965 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
9966 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
9967 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
9968 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
9969 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
9970 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
9971 print. :)</p>
9972
9973 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
9974 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
9975 language.</p>
9976
9977       </div>
9978       <div class="tags">
9979
9980
9981         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
9982
9983
9984       </div>
9985     </div>
9986     <div class="padding"></div>
9987
9988     <div class="entry">
9989       <div class="title">
9990         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
9991       </div>
9992       <div class="date">
9993         16th July 2012
9994       </div>
9995       <div class="body">
9996         <p>I am currently working on a
9997 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
9998 to translate</a> the book
9999 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
10000 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
10001 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
10002 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
10003 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
10004 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
10005 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10006
10007 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
10008 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
10009 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
10010 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
10011 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
10012 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
10013 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
10014 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
10015 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
10016
10017       </div>
10018       <div class="tags">
10019
10020
10021         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10022
10023
10024       </div>
10025     </div>
10026     <div class="padding"></div>
10027
10028     <div class="entry">
10029       <div class="title">
10030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
10031       </div>
10032       <div class="date">
10033          9th July 2012
10034       </div>
10035       <div class="body">
10036         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10037 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
10038 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
10039 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
10040 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
10041 to adjust and scale the just released
10042 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10043 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
10044 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
10045
10046 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10047
10048 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
10049 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
10050 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
10051 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
10052 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
10053 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
10054 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
10055 perspective when working with IT.</p>
10056
10057 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10058 project?</strong></p>
10059
10060 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
10061 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
10062 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
10063 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
10064 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
10065 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
10066
10067 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10068 Edu?</strong></p>
10069
10070 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
10071 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
10072 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
10073 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
10074 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
10075 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
10076 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
10077 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
10078 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
10079 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
10080 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
10081 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
10082 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
10083 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
10084 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
10085 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
10086 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
10087 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
10088 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
10089 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
10090 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
10091 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
10092 quicker to update.
10093
10094 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10095 Edu?</strong></p>
10096
10097 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
10098 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
10099 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
10100 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
10101 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
10102 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
10103
10104 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
10105 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
10106 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
10107 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
10108 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
10109 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
10110 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
10111 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
10112 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
10113 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
10114 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
10115 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
10116 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
10117 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
10118 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
10119
10120 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
10121 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
10122 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
10123 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
10124 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
10125 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
10126 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
10127 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
10128
10129 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
10130 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
10131 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
10132 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
10133 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
10134 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
10135 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
10136 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
10137 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
10138 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
10139 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
10140 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
10141 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
10142 sound file.</p>
10143
10144 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
10145 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
10146 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
10147 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
10148 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
10149 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
10150 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
10151 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
10152 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
10153
10154 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10155
10156 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
10157 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
10158 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
10159 )</p>
10160
10161 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10162 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10163
10164 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
10165 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
10166 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
10167 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
10168 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
10169 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
10170 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
10171 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
10172 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
10173 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
10174 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
10175 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
10176 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
10177 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
10178 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
10179
10180 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
10181 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
10182 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
10183 management with Airtime</a>,
10184 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
10185 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
10186 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
10187 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
10188 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
10189
10190       </div>
10191       <div class="tags">
10192
10193
10194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10195
10196
10197       </div>
10198     </div>
10199     <div class="padding"></div>
10200
10201     <div class="entry">
10202       <div class="title">
10203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
10204       </div>
10205       <div class="date">
10206          8th July 2012
10207       </div>
10208       <div class="body">
10209         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
10210 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
10211 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
10212 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
10213 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
10214 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
10215 Steinberg in his blog post
10216 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
10217 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
10218 spending of your tax money.</p>
10219
10220 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
10221 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
10222 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
10223 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
10224 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
10225 purchases.</p>
10226
10227       </div>
10228       <div class="tags">
10229
10230
10231         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10232
10233
10234       </div>
10235     </div>
10236     <div class="padding"></div>
10237
10238     <div class="entry">
10239       <div class="title">
10240         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
10241       </div>
10242       <div class="date">
10243          7th July 2012
10244       </div>
10245       <div class="body">
10246         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10247 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
10248 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
10249 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
10250 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
10251 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
10252 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
10253 receive.  The software is
10254
10255 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
10256 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
10257 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
10258 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
10259 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
10260 Windows</a>.</p>
10261
10262 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
10263 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
10264
10265 <p><ul>
10266
10267   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
10268     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
10269
10270   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
10271     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
10272     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
10273     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
10274     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
10275     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
10276     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
10277     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
10278     </li>
10279
10280   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
10281     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
10282
10283   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
10284     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
10285
10286   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
10287     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
10288
10289   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
10290
10291   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
10292     formats </li>
10293
10294   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
10295     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
10296     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
10297     (as separate sets)</li>
10298
10299   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
10300     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
10301     percentage)</li>
10302
10303   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
10304     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
10305     memory):
10306     <ul>
10307       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
10308       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
10309       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
10310       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
10311       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
10312       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
10313       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
10314       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
10315       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
10316       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
10317           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
10318           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
10319           activity)</li>
10320       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
10321       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
10322     </ul></li>
10323
10324   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
10325     <ul>
10326       <li>Break periods</li>
10327       <li>For teacher(s):
10328         <ul>
10329           <li>Not available periods</li>
10330           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
10331           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
10332           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
10333           <li>Min hours daily</li>
10334           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
10335
10336           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
10337             days per week</li>
10338         </ul></li>
10339       <li>For students (sets):
10340         <ul>
10341           <li>Not available periods</li>
10342           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
10343           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
10344           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
10345           <li>Min hours daily</li>
10346           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
10347
10348           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
10349             days per week</li>
10350         </ul></li>
10351       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
10352         <ul>
10353           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
10354           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
10355           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
10356           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
10357           <li>End(s) students day</li>
10358           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
10359           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
10360             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
10361           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
10362           <li>Not overlapping</li>
10363           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
10364           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
10365         </ul></li>
10366     </ul></li>
10367
10368   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
10369     <ul>
10370       <li>Room not available periods</li>
10371       <li>For teacher(s):
10372         <ul>
10373           <li>Home room(s)</li>
10374           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
10375           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
10376         </ul>
10377       </li>
10378
10379       <li>For students (sets):
10380         <ul>
10381           <li>Home room(s)</li>
10382           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
10383           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
10384         </ul>
10385       </li>
10386       <li>Preferred room(s):
10387         <ul>
10388           <li>For a subject</li>
10389           <li>For an activity tag</li>
10390           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
10391           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
10392         </ul>
10393       </li>
10394
10395       <li>For a set of activities:
10396         <ul>
10397           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
10398         </ul>
10399       </li>
10400     </ul>
10401   </li>
10402 </ul></p>
10403
10404 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
10405 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
10406 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
10407 manually, check it out.
10408
10409 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
10410 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
10411 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
10412 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
10413 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
10414 section</a>.</p>
10415
10416       </div>
10417       <div class="tags">
10418
10419
10420         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10421
10422
10423       </div>
10424     </div>
10425     <div class="padding"></div>
10426
10427     <div class="entry">
10428       <div class="title">
10429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
10430       </div>
10431       <div class="date">
10432          3rd July 2012
10433       </div>
10434       <div class="body">
10435         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
10436 project (Norwegian version of
10437 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
10438 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
10439 a problem with the municipalities using
10440 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
10441 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
10442 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
10443 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
10444 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
10445 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
10446 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
10447 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
10448 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
10449 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
10450 the From: header.</p>
10451
10452 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
10453 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
10454 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
10455 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
10456 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
10457 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
10458 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
10459 behaviour.</p>
10460
10461 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
10462 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
10463 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
10464 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
10465 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
10466 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
10467 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
10468
10469       </div>
10470       <div class="tags">
10471
10472
10473         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10474
10475
10476       </div>
10477     </div>
10478     <div class="padding"></div>
10479
10480     <div class="entry">
10481       <div class="title">
10482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
10483       </div>
10484       <div class="date">
10485         26th June 2012
10486       </div>
10487       <div class="body">
10488         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
10489 another interview with the people behind
10490 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
10491 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
10492 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
10493 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
10494 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
10495 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10496 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
10497
10498 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10499
10500 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
10501 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
10502 ICT in schools</p>
10503
10504 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10505 project?</strong></p>
10506
10507 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
10508 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
10509 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
10510 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
10511
10512 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10513 Edu?</strong></p>
10514
10515 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
10516 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
10517 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
10518 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
10519
10520 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10521 Edu?</strong></p>
10522
10523 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
10524 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
10525 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
10526 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
10527 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
10528 technologies in school.</p>
10529
10530 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10531
10532 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
10533 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
10534 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
10535
10536 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10537 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10538
10539 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
10540 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
10541 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
10542 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
10543
10544 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
10545 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
10546 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
10547
10548 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
10549 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
10550 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
10551 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
10552 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
10553 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
10554 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
10555 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
10556 working there.</p>
10557
10558       </div>
10559       <div class="tags">
10560
10561
10562         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10563
10564
10565       </div>
10566     </div>
10567     <div class="padding"></div>
10568
10569     <div class="entry">
10570       <div class="title">
10571         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
10572       </div>
10573       <div class="date">
10574         24th June 2012
10575       </div>
10576       <div class="body">
10577         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
10578 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
10579 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
10580 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
10581 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
10582 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
10583 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
10584 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
10585 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
10586 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
10587 missing in my book.</p>
10588
10589 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
10590 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
10591 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
10592 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
10593 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
10594 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
10595 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
10596
10597       </div>
10598       <div class="tags">
10599
10600
10601         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>.
10602
10603
10604       </div>
10605     </div>
10606     <div class="padding"></div>
10607
10608     <div class="entry">
10609       <div class="title">
10610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
10611       </div>
10612       <div class="date">
10613         11th June 2012
10614       </div>
10615       <div class="body">
10616         <p>During my work on
10617 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
10618 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
10619 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
10620 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
10621 explanation.</p>
10622
10623 <p><ul>
10624
10625 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
10626 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
10627 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
10628 system depend on tasksel tasks in
10629 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
10630 installation.</li>
10631
10632 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
10633 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
10634 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
10635 at least try to enable it for these services:
10636 <ul>
10637
10638   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
10639     quotas.</li>
10640   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
10641   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
10642   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
10643   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
10644   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
10645
10646 </ul></li>
10647
10648 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
10649 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
10650 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
10651 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
10652
10653 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
10654 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
10655 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
10656
10657 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
10658 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
10659 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
10660 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
10661 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
10662 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
10663
10664 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
10665 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
10666 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
10667 in Wheezy.
10668
10669 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
10670 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
10671 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
10672
10673 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
10674 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
10675 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
10676 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
10677
10678 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
10679 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
10680 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
10681 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
10682
10683 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
10684 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
10685 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
10686
10687 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
10688 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
10689 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
10690
10691 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
10692 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
10693 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
10694 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
10695 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
10696
10697 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
10698 <ul>
10699
10700 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
10701 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
10702 <li>and probably more?</li>
10703 </ul></li>
10704
10705 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
10706 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
10707 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
10708 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
10709 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
10710 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
10711 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
10712 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
10713
10714
10715 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
10716 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
10717 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
10718 use.</li>
10719
10720 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
10721 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
10722 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
10723 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
10724 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
10725
10726 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
10727 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
10728 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
10729 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
10730 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
10731 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
10732
10733 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
10734 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
10735 There are at least three implementations,
10736 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
10737 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
10738 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
10739 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
10740 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
10741 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
10742 given room.</li>
10743
10744 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
10745 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
10746 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
10747 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
10748 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
10749 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
10750 investigated.</li>
10751
10752 </ul></p>
10753
10754 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
10755 version.</p>
10756
10757       </div>
10758       <div class="tags">
10759
10760
10761         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10762
10763
10764       </div>
10765     </div>
10766     <div class="padding"></div>
10767
10768     <div class="entry">
10769       <div class="title">
10770         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
10771       </div>
10772       <div class="date">
10773          9th June 2012
10774       </div>
10775       <div class="body">
10776         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
10777 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
10778 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
10779 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
10780 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
10781 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
10782 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
10783 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
10784 be willing to pay for.</p>
10785
10786 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
10787 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
10788 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
10789 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
10790 Orwell</a>.</p>
10791
10792       </div>
10793       <div class="tags">
10794
10795
10796         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
10797
10798
10799       </div>
10800     </div>
10801     <div class="padding"></div>
10802
10803     <div class="entry">
10804       <div class="title">
10805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
10806       </div>
10807       <div class="date">
10808          6th June 2012
10809       </div>
10810       <div class="body">
10811         <p>A few days ago
10812 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
10813 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
10814 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
10815 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
10816 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
10817 code for HP, Dell and IBM
10818 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
10819 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
10820 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
10821 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
10822 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
10823
10824 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
10825 output:
10826
10827 <blockquote><pre>
10828 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
10829 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
10830 %
10831 </pre></blockquote>
10832
10833 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
10834 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
10835 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
10836
10837       </div>
10838       <div class="tags">
10839
10840
10841         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10842
10843
10844       </div>
10845     </div>
10846     <div class="padding"></div>
10847
10848     <div class="entry">
10849       <div class="title">
10850         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
10851       </div>
10852       <div class="date">
10853          2nd June 2012
10854       </div>
10855       <div class="body">
10856         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
10857 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10858 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
10859 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
10860 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10861 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
10862
10863 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10864
10865 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
10866 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
10867 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
10868 by Angela).</p>
10869
10870 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
10871 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
10872 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
10873 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
10874 becoming an osteopath.</p>
10875
10876 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
10877 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
10878 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
10879 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
10880 skills with communication skills.</p>
10881
10882 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10883 project?</strong></p>
10884
10885 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
10886 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
10887 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
10888 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
10889 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
10890
10891 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
10892 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
10893 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
10894 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
10895 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
10896 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
10897 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
10898 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
10899 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
10900
10901 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
10902 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
10903 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
10904
10905 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
10906
10907 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
10908 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
10909 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
10910 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
10911 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
10912 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
10913 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
10914 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
10915 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
10916 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
10917 point.</p>
10918
10919 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
10920 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
10921 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
10922 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
10923 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
10924 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
10925
10926 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
10927 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
10928 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
10929 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
10930 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
10931 spare time.</p>
10932
10933 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
10934 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
10935 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
10936 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
10937 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
10938
10939 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
10940 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
10941 avoidance do exist.</p>
10942
10943 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
10944 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
10945 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
10946 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
10947 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
10948 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
10949 and probably a gain for all.</p>
10950
10951 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10952 Edu?</strong></p>
10953
10954 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
10955 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
10956 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
10957 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
10958 project communication, honest communication within the group of
10959 developers, etc.</p>
10960
10961 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10962 Edu?</strong></p>
10963
10964 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
10965
10966 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
10967 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
10968 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
10969 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
10970 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
10971 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
10972 contribute).</p>
10973
10974 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
10975 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
10976 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
10977 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
10978 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
10979 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
10980 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
10981 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
10982 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
10983 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
10984
10985 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10986
10987 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
10988
10989 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
10990 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
10991 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
10992
10993 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
10994 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
10995 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
10996 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
10997
10998 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
10999 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
11000 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
11001 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
11002 whiteboard.</p>
11003
11004 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
11005
11006 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11007 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11008
11009 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
11010 enrol people.</p>
11011
11012       </div>
11013       <div class="tags">
11014
11015
11016         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11017
11018
11019       </div>
11020     </div>
11021     <div class="padding"></div>
11022
11023     <div class="entry">
11024       <div class="title">
11025         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
11026       </div>
11027       <div class="date">
11028          1st June 2012
11029       </div>
11030       <div class="body">
11031         <p>A few years ago I wrote
11032 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
11033 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
11034 I have learned from colleges here at the
11035 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
11036 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
11037 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
11038 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
11039 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
11040
11041 <p><pre>
11042 use strict;
11043 use warnings;
11044 use SOAP::Lite;
11045 use Data::Dumper;
11046 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
11047 my $App = 'test';
11048 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
11049 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
11050 my $s = SOAP::Lite
11051     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
11052     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
11053     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
11054     ;
11055 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
11056     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
11057     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
11058     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
11059 );
11060 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
11061 </pre></p>
11062
11063 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
11064
11065 <p><pre>
11066 $VAR1 = {
11067           'Asset' => {
11068                      'Entitlements' => {
11069                                        'EntitlementData' => [
11070                                                             {
11071                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
11072                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
11073                                                               'Provider' => '',
11074                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
11075                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
11076                                                             },
11077                                                             {
11078                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
11079                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
11080                                                               'Provider' => '',
11081                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
11082                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
11083                                                             },
11084                                                             {
11085                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
11086                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
11087                                                               'Provider' => '',
11088                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
11089                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
11090                                                             }
11091                                                           ]
11092                                      },
11093                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
11094                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
11095                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
11096                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
11097                                           'Buid' => '2323',
11098                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
11099                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
11100                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
11101                                         }
11102                    }
11103         };
11104 </pre></p>
11105
11106 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
11107 service outside the
11108 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
11109 documentation</a>, and according to
11110 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
11111 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
11112 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
11113
11114 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
11115 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
11116
11117       </div>
11118       <div class="tags">
11119
11120
11121         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11122
11123
11124       </div>
11125     </div>
11126     <div class="padding"></div>
11127
11128     <div class="entry">
11129       <div class="title">
11130         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
11131       </div>
11132       <div class="date">
11133         31st May 2012
11134       </div>
11135       <div class="body">
11136         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
11137 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
11138 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
11139 running Debian Squeeze, where
11140 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
11141 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
11142 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
11143 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
11144 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
11145 another day.</p>
11146
11147 <p>After calibration, I get a
11148 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
11149 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
11150 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
11151 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
11152 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
11153 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
11154 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
11155 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
11156 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
11157 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
11158 and a simple</p>
11159
11160 <p><pre>
11161 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
11162 </pre></p>
11163
11164 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
11165 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
11166 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
11167 enough for now.</p>
11168
11169       </div>
11170       <div class="tags">
11171
11172
11173         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11174
11175
11176       </div>
11177     </div>
11178     <div class="padding"></div>
11179
11180     <div class="entry">
11181       <div class="title">
11182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
11183       </div>
11184       <div class="date">
11185         27th May 2012
11186       </div>
11187       <div class="body">
11188         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
11189 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11190 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
11191 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
11192 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
11193 since then, helping to make sure the
11194 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11195 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
11196
11197 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11198
11199 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
11200 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
11201 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
11202 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
11203 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
11204 our computer network.</p>
11205
11206 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
11207 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
11208 (4 months).</p>
11209
11210 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11211 project?</strong></p>
11212
11213 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
11214 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
11215 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
11216 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
11217 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
11218 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
11219 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
11220 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
11221 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
11222 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
11223 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
11224 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
11225 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
11226 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
11227
11228 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11229 Edu?</strong></p>
11230
11231 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
11232 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
11233 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
11234 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
11235 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
11236 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
11237 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
11238 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
11239
11240 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11241 Edu?</strong></p>
11242
11243 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
11244 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
11245 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
11246 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
11247 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
11248 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
11249 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
11250 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
11251 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
11252 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
11253 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
11254 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
11255
11256 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11257
11258 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
11259 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
11260 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
11261
11262 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11263 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11264
11265 <p><ol>
11266
11267 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
11268 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
11269 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
11270 developing.</li>
11271
11272 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
11273 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
11274 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
11275 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
11276 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
11277
11278 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
11279 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
11280 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
11281
11282 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
11283 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
11284 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
11285 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
11286
11287 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
11288 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
11289 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
11290
11291 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
11292
11293 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
11294 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
11295 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
11296 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
11297
11298 </ol></p>
11299
11300       </div>
11301       <div class="tags">
11302
11303
11304         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11305
11306
11307       </div>
11308     </div>
11309     <div class="padding"></div>
11310
11311     <div class="entry">
11312       <div class="title">
11313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
11314       </div>
11315       <div class="date">
11316         26th May 2012
11317       </div>
11318       <div class="body">
11319         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
11320 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
11321 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
11322 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
11323 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
11324
11325 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
11326 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
11327 comment:</p>
11328
11329 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
11330 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
11331 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
11332 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
11333 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
11334 </blockquote></p>
11335
11336 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
11337 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
11338 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
11339 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
11340 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
11341 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
11342 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
11343 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
11344 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
11345 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
11346 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
11347 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
11348 of wasted effort.</p>
11349
11350 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
11351 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
11352 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
11353
11354 <p>See
11355 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
11356 and
11357 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
11358 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
11359 </blockquote></p>
11360
11361       </div>
11362       <div class="tags">
11363
11364
11365         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11366
11367
11368       </div>
11369     </div>
11370     <div class="padding"></div>
11371
11372     <div class="entry">
11373       <div class="title">
11374         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
11375       </div>
11376       <div class="date">
11377         18th May 2012
11378       </div>
11379       <div class="body">
11380         <p>In january, I
11381 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
11382 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
11383 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
11384 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
11385 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
11386 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
11387 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
11388 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
11389 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
11390 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
11391
11392 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
11393 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
11394 drivers. :)</p>
11395
11396       </div>
11397       <div class="tags">
11398
11399
11400         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11401
11402
11403       </div>
11404     </div>
11405     <div class="padding"></div>
11406
11407     <div class="entry">
11408       <div class="title">
11409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
11410       </div>
11411       <div class="date">
11412         13th May 2012
11413       </div>
11414       <div class="body">
11415         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
11416 publish another interview with the people behind
11417 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
11418 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
11419 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
11420 details get right before release.
11421
11422 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11423
11424 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
11425 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
11426 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
11427 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
11428 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
11429 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
11430 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
11431 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
11432
11433 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
11434 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
11435 home since 2006.</p>
11436
11437 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11438 project?</strong></p>
11439
11440 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
11441 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
11442 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
11443 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
11444 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
11445 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
11446
11447 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
11448 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
11449 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
11450 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
11451 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
11452 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
11453 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
11454 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
11455 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
11456 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
11457 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
11458 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
11459 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
11460 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
11461 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
11462 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
11463
11464 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11465 Edu?</strong></p>
11466
11467 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
11468 for me as today.</p>
11469
11470 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
11471
11472 <p><ul>
11473
11474 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
11475 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
11476
11477 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
11478 cost.</li>
11479
11480 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
11481 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
11482 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
11483 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
11484 server</li>
11485
11486 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
11487 school.</li>
11488
11489 </ul></p>
11490
11491 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
11492 came up in this way:</p>
11493
11494 <p><ul>
11495
11496 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
11497 now.</li>
11498
11499 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
11500 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
11501 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
11502
11503 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
11504 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
11505 interfaces used in the past.</li>
11506
11507 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
11508 different needs.</li>
11509
11510 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
11511
11512 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
11513 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
11514 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
11515
11516 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
11517 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
11518
11519 </ul></p>
11520
11521 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11522 Edu?</strong></p>
11523
11524 <p><ul>
11525
11526 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
11527 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
11528 whole municipality areas.</li>
11529
11530 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
11531 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
11532 politicians.</li>
11533
11534 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
11535
11536 </ul></p>
11537
11538 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11539
11540 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
11541 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
11542 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
11543 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
11544 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
11545 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
11546
11547 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
11548 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
11549 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
11550 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
11551 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
11552
11553 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11554 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11555
11556 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
11557 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
11558 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
11559
11560       </div>
11561       <div class="tags">
11562
11563
11564         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11565
11566
11567       </div>
11568     </div>
11569     <div class="padding"></div>
11570
11571     <div class="entry">
11572       <div class="title">
11573         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
11574       </div>
11575       <div class="date">
11576         30th April 2012
11577       </div>
11578       <div class="body">
11579         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
11580 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
11581
11582 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
11583 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
11584 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
11585 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
11586 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
11587 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
11588 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
11589 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
11590 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
11591 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
11592 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
11593 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
11594 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
11595 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
11596 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
11597 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
11598
11599 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
11600 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
11601 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
11602 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
11603 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
11604 finally found a Danish supplier
11605 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
11606 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
11607 days ago.</p>
11608
11609 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
11610 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
11611 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
11612 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
11613 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
11614 toys.</p>
11615
11616       </div>
11617       <div class="tags">
11618
11619
11620         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11621
11622
11623       </div>
11624     </div>
11625     <div class="padding"></div>
11626
11627     <div class="entry">
11628       <div class="title">
11629         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
11630       </div>
11631       <div class="date">
11632         26th April 2012
11633       </div>
11634       <div class="body">
11635         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
11636 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
11637 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
11638 that the video editor application included with
11639 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
11640 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
11641 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
11642
11643 <p><blockquote>
11644 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
11645 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
11646 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
11647 </blockquote></p>
11648
11649 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
11650
11651 <p><blockquote>
11652 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
11653 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
11654 </blockquote></p>
11655
11656 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
11657 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
11658 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
11659 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
11660 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
11661 video.  AMR is
11662 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
11663 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
11664 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
11665 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
11666 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
11667 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
11668 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
11669
11670 <p>I know why I prefer
11671 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
11672 standards</a> also for video.</p>
11673
11674       </div>
11675       <div class="tags">
11676
11677
11678         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11679
11680
11681       </div>
11682     </div>
11683     <div class="padding"></div>
11684
11685     <div class="entry">
11686       <div class="title">
11687         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
11688       </div>
11689       <div class="date">
11690         19th April 2012
11691       </div>
11692       <div class="body">
11693         <p>Here in Norway, the
11694 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
11695 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
11696 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
11697 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
11698 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
11699 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
11700 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
11701 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
11702 on the same level.</p>
11703
11704 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
11705 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
11706 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
11707 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
11708 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
11709 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
11710 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
11711 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
11712 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
11713 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
11714 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
11715 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
11716 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
11717 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
11718 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
11719 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
11720 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
11721 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
11722
11723 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
11724 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
11725 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
11726 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
11727 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
11728 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
11729 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
11730 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
11731
11732 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
11733 from Simon Phipps
11734 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
11735 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
11736
11737 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
11738 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
11739 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
11740 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
11741 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
11742 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
11743 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
11744 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
11745 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
11746
11747       </div>
11748       <div class="tags">
11749
11750
11751         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11752
11753
11754       </div>
11755     </div>
11756     <div class="padding"></div>
11757
11758     <div class="entry">
11759       <div class="title">
11760         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
11761       </div>
11762       <div class="date">
11763         15th April 2012
11764       </div>
11765       <div class="body">
11766         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
11767 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
11768 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
11769 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
11770 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
11771 up in the recently released
11772 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
11773 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
11774
11775 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11776
11777 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
11778 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
11779 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
11780 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
11781 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
11782 information technology and science/technology.</p>
11783
11784 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11785 project?</strong></p>
11786
11787 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
11788 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
11789 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
11790 contributing.</p>
11791
11792 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11793 Edu?</strong></p>
11794
11795 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
11796 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
11797 Debian Project!</p>
11798
11799 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11800 Edu?</strong></p>
11801
11802 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
11803 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
11804 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
11805 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
11806 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
11807 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
11808 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
11809
11810 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
11811 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
11812
11813 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11814
11815 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
11816 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
11817 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
11818 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
11819
11820 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11821 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11822
11823 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
11824 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
11825 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
11826 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
11827 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
11828 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
11829 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
11830
11831 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
11832 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
11833 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
11834 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
11835 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
11836 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
11837 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
11838 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
11839
11840       </div>
11841       <div class="tags">
11842
11843
11844         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11845
11846
11847       </div>
11848     </div>
11849     <div class="padding"></div>
11850
11851     <div class="entry">
11852       <div class="title">
11853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
11854       </div>
11855       <div class="date">
11856          8th April 2012
11857       </div>
11858       <div class="body">
11859         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
11860 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
11861 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
11862 contributor to the
11863 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
11864 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
11865
11866 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11867
11868 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
11869 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
11870
11871 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11872 project?</strong></p>
11873
11874 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
11875 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
11876 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
11877 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
11878 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
11879 "localisation".</p>
11880
11881 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11882 Edu?</strong></p>
11883
11884 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11885 Edu?</strong></p>
11886
11887 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
11888 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
11889 education system.</p>
11890
11891 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
11892 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
11893 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
11894 money on the latest hardware.</p>
11895
11896 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11897
11898 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
11899 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
11900 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
11901
11902 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11903 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11904
11905 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
11906 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
11907 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
11908
11909       </div>
11910       <div class="tags">
11911
11912
11913         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11914
11915
11916       </div>
11917     </div>
11918     <div class="padding"></div>
11919
11920     <div class="entry">
11921       <div class="title">
11922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
11923       </div>
11924       <div class="date">
11925          6th April 2012
11926       </div>
11927       <div class="body">
11928         <p>Recently I have spent time with
11929 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
11930 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
11931 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
11932 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
11933 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
11934 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
11935 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
11936 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
11937
11938 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
11939 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
11940 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
11941 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
11942 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
11943 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
11944 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
11945 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
11946
11947 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
11948 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
11949 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
11950 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
11951 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
11952 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
11953 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
11954 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
11955
11956 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
11957 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
11958 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
11959 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
11960 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
11961 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
11962 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
11963 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
11964 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
11965 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
11966
11967 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
11968 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
11969 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
11970 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
11971
11972 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
11973 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
11974
11975       </div>
11976       <div class="tags">
11977
11978
11979         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11980
11981
11982       </div>
11983     </div>
11984     <div class="padding"></div>
11985
11986     <div class="entry">
11987       <div class="title">
11988         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
11989       </div>
11990       <div class="date">
11991          5th April 2012
11992       </div>
11993       <div class="body">
11994         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
11995 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
11996 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
11997 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
11998 for schools.  Check out his article
11999 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
12000 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
12001
12002       </div>
12003       <div class="tags">
12004
12005
12006         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12007
12008
12009       </div>
12010     </div>
12011     <div class="padding"></div>
12012
12013     <div class="entry">
12014       <div class="title">
12015         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
12016       </div>
12017       <div class="date">
12018          1st April 2012
12019       </div>
12020       <div class="body">
12021         <p>Germany is a core area for the
12022 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12023 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
12024 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
12025
12026 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12027
12028 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
12029 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
12030 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
12031 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
12032 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
12033 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
12034 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
12035 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
12036
12037 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
12038 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
12039 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
12040 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
12041 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
12042 the end of April this year.</p>
12043
12044 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12045 project?</strong></p>
12046
12047 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
12048 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
12049 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
12050 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
12051 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
12052 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
12053 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
12054 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
12055 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
12056 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
12057 Skolelinux.</p>
12058
12059 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
12060 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
12061 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
12062 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
12063 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
12064 the admin teachers.</p>
12065
12066 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12067 Edu?</strong></p>
12068
12069 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
12070 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
12071 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
12072
12073 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
12074 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
12075 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
12076 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
12077 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
12078
12079 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12080 Edu?</strong></p>
12081
12082 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
12083
12084 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12085
12086 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
12087 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
12088 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
12089 LibreOffice.</p>
12090
12091 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12092 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12093
12094 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
12095 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
12096 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
12097
12098       </div>
12099       <div class="tags">
12100
12101
12102         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12103
12104
12105       </div>
12106     </div>
12107     <div class="padding"></div>
12108
12109     <div class="entry">
12110       <div class="title">
12111         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
12112       </div>
12113       <div class="date">
12114         25th March 2012
12115       </div>
12116       <div class="body">
12117         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
12118
12119 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
12120 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
12121 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
12122 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
12123 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
12124 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
12125 and download as a
12126 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
12127 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
12128
12129 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
12130   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
12131     <p>Download video as
12132       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
12133 </video></p>
12134
12135       </div>
12136       <div class="tags">
12137
12138
12139         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12140
12141
12142       </div>
12143     </div>
12144     <div class="padding"></div>
12145
12146     <div class="entry">
12147       <div class="title">
12148         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
12149       </div>
12150       <div class="date">
12151         19th March 2012
12152       </div>
12153       <div class="body">
12154         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
12155 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
12156 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
12157 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
12158 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
12159
12160 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12161
12162 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
12163 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
12164 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
12165 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
12166 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
12167 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
12168 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
12169 installations.</p>
12170
12171 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12172 project?</strong></p>
12173
12174 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
12175 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
12176 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
12177 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
12178 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
12179 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
12180 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
12181 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
12182 these things we decided to try it.</p>
12183
12184 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12185 Edu?</strong></p>
12186
12187 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
12188 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
12189 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
12190 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
12191 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
12192 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
12193 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
12194 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
12195
12196 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12197 Edu?</strong></p>
12198
12199 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
12200 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
12201 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
12202 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
12203 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
12204
12205 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12206
12207 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
12208 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
12209 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
12210 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
12211 that counts...)</p>
12212
12213 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12214 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12215
12216 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
12217 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
12218 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
12219 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
12220 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
12221 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
12222 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
12223 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
12224 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
12225 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
12226 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
12227
12228 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
12229 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
12230 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
12231
12232       </div>
12233       <div class="tags">
12234
12235
12236         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12237
12238
12239       </div>
12240     </div>
12241     <div class="padding"></div>
12242
12243     <div class="entry">
12244       <div class="title">
12245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
12246       </div>
12247       <div class="date">
12248         16th March 2012
12249       </div>
12250       <div class="body">
12251         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
12252 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
12253 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
12254 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
12255
12256 <ol>
12257
12258 <li>The documentation is written in a
12259 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
12260 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
12261 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
12262 docbook XML.</li>
12263
12264 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
12265 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
12266 with the translated text.</li>
12267
12268 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
12269 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
12270 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
12271 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
12272 images.</li>
12273
12274 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
12275 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
12276
12277 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
12278 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
12279
12280 </ol>
12281
12282 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
12283 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
12284 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
12285 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
12286 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
12287
12288 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
12289 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
12290 package</a>.</p>
12291
12292       </div>
12293       <div class="tags">
12294
12295
12296         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12297
12298
12299       </div>
12300     </div>
12301     <div class="padding"></div>
12302
12303     <div class="entry">
12304       <div class="title">
12305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
12306       </div>
12307       <div class="date">
12308         11th March 2012
12309       </div>
12310       <div class="body">
12311         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
12312 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
12313 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
12314 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
12315 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
12316 you have not done so already.</p>
12317
12318 <p>I plan to present the new version at
12319 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
12320 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
12321 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
12322
12323       </div>
12324       <div class="tags">
12325
12326
12327         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12328
12329
12330       </div>
12331     </div>
12332     <div class="padding"></div>
12333
12334     <div class="entry">
12335       <div class="title">
12336         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
12337       </div>
12338       <div class="date">
12339          9th March 2012
12340       </div>
12341       <div class="body">
12342         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
12343 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
12344 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12345 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
12346 more international audience.</p>
12347
12348 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
12349 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
12350 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
12351 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
12352 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
12353 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
12354 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
12355
12356
12357 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12358
12359 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
12360 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
12361 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
12362 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
12363 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
12364 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
12365 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
12366 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
12367 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
12368 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
12369 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
12370
12371 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12372 project?</strong></p>
12373
12374 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
12375 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
12376 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
12377 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
12378 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
12379 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
12380 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
12381 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
12382 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
12383 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
12384 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
12385 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
12386 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
12387
12388 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12389 Edu?</strong></p>
12390
12391 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
12392 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
12393 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
12394 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
12395 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
12396 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
12397 Japan.</p>
12398
12399 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12400 Edu?</strong></p>
12401
12402 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
12403 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
12404 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
12405 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
12406 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
12407 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
12408 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
12409 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
12410 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
12411 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
12412 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
12413 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
12414 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
12415 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
12416 help.</p>
12417
12418 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12419
12420 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
12421 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
12422 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
12423 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
12424 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
12425 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
12426 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
12427 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
12428 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
12429 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
12430 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
12431
12432 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12433 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12434
12435 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
12436 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
12437 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
12438 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
12439 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
12440 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
12441 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
12442 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
12443 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
12444 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
12445 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
12446 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
12447
12448       </div>
12449       <div class="tags">
12450
12451
12452         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12453
12454
12455       </div>
12456     </div>
12457     <div class="padding"></div>
12458
12459     <div class="entry">
12460       <div class="title">
12461         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
12462       </div>
12463       <div class="date">
12464          7th March 2012
12465       </div>
12466       <div class="body">
12467         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
12468
12469 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
12470 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
12471 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
12472 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
12473 download as a
12474 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
12475 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
12476
12477 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
12478   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
12479     <p>Download video as
12480       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
12481 </video></p>
12482
12483       </div>
12484       <div class="tags">
12485
12486
12487         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12488
12489
12490       </div>
12491     </div>
12492     <div class="padding"></div>
12493
12494     <div class="entry">
12495       <div class="title">
12496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12497       </div>
12498       <div class="date">
12499          4th March 2012
12500       </div>
12501       <div class="body">
12502         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
12503 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12504 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
12505 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
12506 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
12507 need a software solution for your school.</p>
12508
12509       </div>
12510       <div class="tags">
12511
12512
12513         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12514
12515
12516       </div>
12517     </div>
12518     <div class="padding"></div>
12519
12520     <div class="entry">
12521       <div class="title">
12522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
12523       </div>
12524       <div class="date">
12525          3rd March 2012
12526       </div>
12527       <div class="body">
12528         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
12529 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
12530 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
12531 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
12532 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
12533 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
12534 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
12535 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
12536 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
12537 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
12538 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
12539 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
12540 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
12541 year...</p>
12542
12543 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
12544 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
12545 name,
12546 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
12547 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
12548 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
12549 mean). I've been following
12550 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
12551 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
12552 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
12553 Check it out. :)</p>
12554
12555       </div>
12556       <div class="tags">
12557
12558
12559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12560
12561
12562       </div>
12563     </div>
12564     <div class="padding"></div>
12565
12566     <div class="entry">
12567       <div class="title">
12568         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12569       </div>
12570       <div class="date">
12571         27th February 2012
12572       </div>
12573       <div class="body">
12574         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
12575 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12576 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
12577 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
12578 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
12579 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
12580 need a software solution for your school.</p>
12581
12582       </div>
12583       <div class="tags">
12584
12585
12586         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12587
12588
12589       </div>
12590     </div>
12591     <div class="padding"></div>
12592
12593     <div class="entry">
12594       <div class="title">
12595         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12596       </div>
12597       <div class="date">
12598         19th February 2012
12599       </div>
12600       <div class="body">
12601         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
12602 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
12603 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
12604 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
12605 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
12606 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
12607 solution for your school.</p>
12608
12609       </div>
12610       <div class="tags">
12611
12612
12613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12614
12615
12616       </div>
12617     </div>
12618     <div class="padding"></div>
12619
12620     <div class="entry">
12621       <div class="title">
12622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
12623       </div>
12624       <div class="date">
12625         14th February 2012
12626       </div>
12627       <div class="body">
12628         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
12629 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
12630 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
12631 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
12632 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
12633 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
12634 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
12635 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
12636 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
12637
12638 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
12639 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
12640 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
12641 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
12642 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
12643
12644 <blockquote><pre>
12645 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
12646 do
12647     printf "Failed disk $d: "
12648     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
12649 done
12650 </blockquote></pre>
12651
12652 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
12653 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
12654
12655 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
12656
12657 <blockquote><pre>
12658 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
12659 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
12660 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
12661 </blockquote></pre>
12662
12663 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
12664 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
12665 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
12666 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
12667 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
12668 mounted inside my box.</p>
12669
12670 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
12671 Software RAID in the
12672 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
12673 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
12674 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
12675 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
12676 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
12677 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
12678
12679       </div>
12680       <div class="tags">
12681
12682
12683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
12684
12685
12686       </div>
12687     </div>
12688     <div class="padding"></div>
12689
12690     <div class="entry">
12691       <div class="title">
12692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
12693       </div>
12694       <div class="date">
12695         13th February 2012
12696       </div>
12697       <div class="body">
12698         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
12699 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
12700 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
12701 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
12702 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
12703 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
12704 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
12705 change the global proxy setting by editing
12706 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
12707 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
12708
12709 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
12710 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
12711 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
12712
12713 <blockquote><pre>
12714 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
12715 {
12716    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
12717        isPlainHostName(host) ||
12718        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
12719       return "DIRECT";
12720    else
12721       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
12722 }
12723 </pre></blockquote>
12724
12725 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
12726
12727 <blockquote><pre>
12728 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
12729 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
12730 </pre></blockquote>
12731
12732 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
12733 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
12734 would be used for
12735 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
12736 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
12737 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
12738 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
12739 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
12740 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
12741 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
12742 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
12743 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
12744 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
12745
12746 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
12747 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
12748 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
12749 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
12750 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
12751 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
12752
12753 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
12754 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
12755 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
12756 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
12757 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
12758 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
12759 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
12760 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
12761 the network setup changes.</p>
12762
12763 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
12764 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
12765 draft</a> and a
12766 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
12767 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
12768
12769       </div>
12770       <div class="tags">
12771
12772
12773         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12774
12775
12776       </div>
12777     </div>
12778     <div class="padding"></div>
12779
12780     <div class="entry">
12781       <div class="title">
12782         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
12783       </div>
12784       <div class="date">
12785          5th February 2012
12786       </div>
12787       <div class="body">
12788         <p>Since the Lenny version of
12789 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
12790 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
12791 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
12792 in the morning.  This is done using the
12793 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
12794
12795 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
12796 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
12797 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
12798 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
12799 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
12800 the
12801 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
12802 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
12803 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
12804 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
12805 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
12806
12807 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
12808 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
12809 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
12810 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
12811 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
12812 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
12813 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
12814
12815 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
12816 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
12817 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
12818 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
12819 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
12820
12821       </div>
12822       <div class="tags">
12823
12824
12825         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12826
12827
12828       </div>
12829     </div>
12830     <div class="padding"></div>
12831
12832     <div class="entry">
12833       <div class="title">
12834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12835       </div>
12836       <div class="date">
12837          4th February 2012
12838       </div>
12839       <div class="body">
12840         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
12841 publish the third beta version of
12842 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
12843 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
12844 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
12845 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
12846 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
12847 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
12848 on the project announcement list.</p>
12849
12850 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
12851 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
12852
12853 <ul>
12854
12855 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
12856   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
12857   the installation.</li>
12858
12859 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
12860   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
12861
12862 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
12863   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
12864   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
12865
12866 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
12867   for the local system administrator is created during installation
12868   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
12869   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
12870   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
12871   up to date on the system.</li>
12872
12873 </ul>
12874
12875 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
12876 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
12877 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
12878 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
12879
12880 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
12881 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
12882 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
12883 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
12884 will see you there?</p>
12885
12886       </div>
12887       <div class="tags">
12888
12889
12890         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12891
12892
12893       </div>
12894     </div>
12895     <div class="padding"></div>
12896
12897     <div class="entry">
12898       <div class="title">
12899         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
12900       </div>
12901       <div class="date">
12902         27th January 2012
12903       </div>
12904       <div class="body">
12905         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
12906 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
12907 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
12908 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
12909 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
12910 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
12911 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
12912
12913 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
12914 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
12915 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
12916 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
12917 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
12918 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
12919 not taken care of by this.</p>
12920
12921 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
12922 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
12923 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
12924 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
12925 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
12926 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
12927 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
12928 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
12929 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
12930 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
12931 firmware packages.</p>
12932
12933 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
12934 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
12935 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
12936 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
12937 initrd with extra firmware, the
12938 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
12939 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
12940 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
12941
12942 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
12943 network cards working.  For this,
12944 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
12945 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
12946 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
12947
12948 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
12949 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
12950 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
12951
12952 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
12953 try.</p>
12954
12955       </div>
12956       <div class="tags">
12957
12958
12959         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12960
12961
12962       </div>
12963     </div>
12964     <div class="padding"></div>
12965
12966     <div class="entry">
12967       <div class="title">
12968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
12969       </div>
12970       <div class="date">
12971         25th January 2012
12972       </div>
12973       <div class="body">
12974         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
12975 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
12976 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
12977 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
12978 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
12979
12980 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
12981 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
12982 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
12983 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
12984 this is done, log on to the central server and run
12985 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
12986 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
12987 will look similar to this:</p>
12988
12989 <p><blockquote><pre>
12990 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
12991 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
12992 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
12993
12994 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
12995
12996 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12997 enter password: *******
12998 %
12999 </pre></blockquote></p>
13000
13001 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
13002 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
13003 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
13004 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
13005 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
13006 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
13007 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
13008 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
13009 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
13010 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
13011 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
13012 automatically.</p>
13013
13014 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
13015 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
13016
13017 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
13018 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
13019 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
13020
13021       </div>
13022       <div class="tags">
13023
13024
13025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
13026
13027
13028       </div>
13029     </div>
13030     <div class="padding"></div>
13031
13032     <div class="entry">
13033       <div class="title">
13034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
13035       </div>
13036       <div class="date">
13037         10th January 2012
13038       </div>
13039       <div class="body">
13040         <p>In the Squeeze version of
13041 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
13042 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
13043 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
13044 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
13045 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
13046 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
13047 first time.</p>
13048
13049 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
13050 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
13051 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
13052 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
13053
13054 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
13055 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
13056 new setting.</p>
13057
13058 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
13059 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
13060 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
13061
13062       </div>
13063       <div class="tags">
13064
13065
13066         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13067
13068
13069       </div>
13070     </div>
13071     <div class="padding"></div>
13072
13073     <div class="entry">
13074       <div class="title">
13075         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13076       </div>
13077       <div class="date">
13078          7th January 2012
13079       </div>
13080       <div class="body">
13081         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
13082 the second beta version of
13083 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
13084 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
13085 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
13086 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
13087 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
13088 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
13089 on the project announcement list.</p>
13090
13091       </div>
13092       <div class="tags">
13093
13094
13095         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13096
13097
13098       </div>
13099     </div>
13100     <div class="padding"></div>
13101
13102     <div class="entry">
13103       <div class="title">
13104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
13105       </div>
13106       <div class="date">
13107          3rd January 2012
13108       </div>
13109       <div class="body">
13110         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
13111 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
13112 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
13113 interesting.</p>
13114
13115 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
13116 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
13117 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
13118 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
13119 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
13120 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
13121 wrap up its tasks.</p>
13122
13123 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
13124 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
13125 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
13126 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
13127 because I was typing.</P>
13128
13129 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
13130 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
13131 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
13132 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
13133 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
13134 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
13135 generate entropy.</p>
13136
13137 <p>The fix is in
13138 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
13139 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
13140 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
13141 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
13142
13143       </div>
13144       <div class="tags">
13145
13146
13147         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13148
13149
13150       </div>
13151     </div>
13152     <div class="padding"></div>
13153
13154     <div class="entry">
13155       <div class="title">
13156         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
13157       </div>
13158       <div class="date">
13159         21st November 2011
13160       </div>
13161       <div class="body">
13162         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
13163 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
13164 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
13165 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
13166 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
13167 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
13168 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
13169 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
13170 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
13171 the tools to do so.</p>
13172
13173 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
13174 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
13175 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
13176 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
13177
13178 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
13179 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
13180 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
13181 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
13182 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
13183 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
13184 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
13185 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
13186
13187 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
13188 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
13189 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
13190
13191 <p><pre>
13192 #!/usr/bin/perl
13193 use strict;
13194 use warnings;
13195 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
13196 BEGIN {
13197     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
13198     my %rhelmodules = (
13199         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
13200         );
13201     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
13202         eval "use $module;";
13203         if ($@) {
13204             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
13205             system("yum install -y $pkg");
13206             eval "use $module;";
13207         }
13208     }
13209 }
13210 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
13211
13212 upgrade_dell();
13213
13214 exit 0;
13215
13216 sub run_firmware_script {
13217     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
13218     unless ($script) {
13219         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
13220         exit 1
13221     }
13222     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
13223
13224     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
13225         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
13226     } else {
13227         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
13228     }
13229 }
13230
13231 sub run_firmware_scripts {
13232     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
13233     # Run firmware packages
13234     for my $dir (@dirs) {
13235         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
13236         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
13237         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
13238             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
13239             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
13240         }
13241         closedir $dh;
13242     }
13243 }
13244
13245 sub download {
13246     my $url = shift;
13247     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
13248     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
13249 }
13250
13251 sub upgrade_dell {
13252     my @dirs;
13253     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13254     chomp $product;
13255
13256     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
13257
13258         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
13259         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
13260
13261         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
13262             CLEANUP => 1
13263             );
13264         chdir($tmpdir);
13265         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
13266         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
13267         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
13268         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
13269         my $fwopts = "-q";
13270         if (@paths) {
13271             for my $url (@paths) {
13272                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
13273             }
13274             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
13275         } else {
13276             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13277             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13278         }
13279         chdir('/');
13280     } else {
13281         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13282         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13283     }
13284 }
13285
13286 sub fetch_dell_fw {
13287     my $path = shift;
13288     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
13289     download($url);
13290 }
13291
13292 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
13293 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
13294 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
13295 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
13296     my $filename = shift;
13297
13298     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13299     chomp $product;
13300     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
13301
13302     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
13303
13304     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
13305     my @paths;
13306     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
13307         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
13308         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
13309         my $oscode;
13310         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
13311             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
13312         } else {
13313             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
13314         }
13315         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
13316         {
13317             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
13318         }
13319     }
13320     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
13321         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
13322
13323         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
13324         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
13325
13326         my $cpath = $component->{path};
13327         for my $path (@paths) {
13328             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
13329                 push(@paths, $cpath);
13330             }
13331         }
13332     }
13333     return @paths;
13334 }
13335 </pre>
13336
13337 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
13338 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
13339 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
13340 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
13341 outdated.</p>
13342
13343       </div>
13344       <div class="tags">
13345
13346
13347         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>.
13348
13349
13350       </div>
13351     </div>
13352     <div class="padding"></div>
13353
13354     <div class="entry">
13355       <div class="title">
13356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
13357       </div>
13358       <div class="date">
13359          7th October 2011
13360       </div>
13361       <div class="body">
13362         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
13363 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
13364 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
13365 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
13366 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
13367 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
13368 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
13369 models.</p>
13370
13371 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
13372 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
13373 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
13374 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
13375
13376 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
13377 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
13378 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
13379 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
13380 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
13381 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
13382 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
13383 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
13384 distributed.</p>
13385
13386 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
13387
13388 <ul>
13389
13390 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
13391   other relevant equipment.</li>
13392
13393 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
13394
13395 </ul>
13396
13397 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
13398 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
13399 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
13400 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
13401 books available.</p>
13402
13403 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
13404 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
13405 libraries. :)</p>
13406
13407       </div>
13408       <div class="tags">
13409
13410
13411         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
13412
13413
13414       </div>
13415     </div>
13416     <div class="padding"></div>
13417
13418     <div class="entry">
13419       <div class="title">
13420         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
13421       </div>
13422       <div class="date">
13423         17th September 2011
13424       </div>
13425       <div class="body">
13426         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
13427 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
13428 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
13429 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
13430 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
13431 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
13432 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
13433 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
13434
13435 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
13436
13437 <blockquote><pre>
13438 #!/bin/sh
13439 # apt-get install lsdvd
13440 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
13441 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
13442 </pre></blockquote>
13443
13444 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
13445 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
13446 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
13447 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
13448
13449 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
13450 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
13451 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
13452 back as an ISO.
13453
13454 <blockquote><pre>
13455 #!/bin/sh
13456 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
13457 set -e
13458 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
13459 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
13460 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
13461 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
13462 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
13463 </pre></blockquote>
13464
13465 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
13466
13467 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
13468 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
13469 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
13470 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
13471 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
13472
13473 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
13474 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
13475 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
13476 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
13477 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
13478 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
13479
13480       </div>
13481       <div class="tags">
13482
13483
13484         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13485
13486
13487       </div>
13488     </div>
13489     <div class="padding"></div>
13490
13491     <div class="entry">
13492       <div class="title">
13493         <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>
13494       </div>
13495       <div class="date">
13496          4th August 2011
13497       </div>
13498       <div class="body">
13499         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
13500 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
13501 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
13502 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
13503 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
13504 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
13505 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
13506 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
13507 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
13508
13509 <p><blockquote>
13510 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
13511 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
13512 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
13513 </blockquote></p>
13514
13515 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
13516 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
13517 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
13518 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
13519 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
13520 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
13521 hard to explain.</p>
13522
13523 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
13524 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
13525 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
13526 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
13527 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
13528 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
13529 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
13530 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
13531 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
13532 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
13533 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
13534 mode).</p>
13535
13536 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
13537 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
13538 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
13539 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
13540 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
13541 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
13542 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
13543 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
13544 after visiting single user mode.</p>
13545
13546 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
13547 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
13548 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
13549 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
13550 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
13551 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
13552 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
13553 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
13554
13555 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
13556 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
13557 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
13558
13559       </div>
13560       <div class="tags">
13561
13562
13563         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>.
13564
13565
13566       </div>
13567     </div>
13568     <div class="padding"></div>
13569
13570     <div class="entry">
13571       <div class="title">
13572         <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>
13573       </div>
13574       <div class="date">
13575         30th July 2011
13576       </div>
13577       <div class="body">
13578         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
13579 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
13580 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
13581 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
13582 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
13583 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
13584 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
13585 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
13586 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
13587 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
13588 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
13589 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
13590 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
13591
13592 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
13593 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
13594 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
13595 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
13596 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
13597 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
13598 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
13599 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
13600 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
13601
13602 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
13603 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
13604 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
13605 is presented.</p>
13606
13607 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
13608 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
13609 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
13610 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
13611 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
13612 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
13613 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
13614 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
13615 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
13616 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
13617 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
13618 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
13619 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
13620 find time to push this forward.</p>
13621
13622       </div>
13623       <div class="tags">
13624
13625
13626         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>.
13627
13628
13629       </div>
13630     </div>
13631     <div class="padding"></div>
13632
13633     <div class="entry">
13634       <div class="title">
13635         <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>
13636       </div>
13637       <div class="date">
13638         29th July 2011
13639       </div>
13640       <div class="body">
13641         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
13642 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
13643 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
13644 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
13645 issues.</p>
13646
13647 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
13648 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
13649 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
13650
13651 <ol>
13652
13653 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
13654 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
13655 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
13656 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
13657 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
13658 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
13659 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
13660 Debian.</li>
13661
13662 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
13663 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
13664 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
13665 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
13666 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
13667 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
13668 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
13669 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
13670 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
13671 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
13672 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
13673 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
13674 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
13675
13676 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
13677 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
13678 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
13679 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
13680 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
13681 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
13682 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
13683 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
13684 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
13685 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
13686
13687 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
13688 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
13689 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
13690 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
13691 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
13692 latter behaviour.</li>
13693
13694 </ol>
13695
13696 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
13697 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
13698 it do not matter much.</p>
13699
13700 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
13701 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
13702 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
13703
13704       </div>
13705       <div class="tags">
13706
13707
13708         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>.
13709
13710
13711       </div>
13712     </div>
13713     <div class="padding"></div>
13714
13715     <div class="entry">
13716       <div class="title">
13717         <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>
13718       </div>
13719       <div class="date">
13720         26th July 2011
13721       </div>
13722       <div class="body">
13723         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
13724 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
13725 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
13726 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
13727 security support for a few years.</p>
13728
13729 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
13730 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
13731 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
13732 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
13733 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
13734 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
13735 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
13736 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
13737 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
13738 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
13739 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
13740 easier in the future.</p>
13741
13742 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
13743 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
13744 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
13745 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
13746 do not have time for.</p>
13747
13748       </div>
13749       <div class="tags">
13750
13751
13752         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>.
13753
13754
13755       </div>
13756     </div>
13757     <div class="padding"></div>
13758
13759     <div class="entry">
13760       <div class="title">
13761         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
13762       </div>
13763       <div class="date">
13764         20th June 2011
13765       </div>
13766       <div class="body">
13767         <p>Reading
13768 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
13769 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
13770 parts of the
13771 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
13772 and
13773 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
13774 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
13775 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
13776 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
13777
13778       </div>
13779       <div class="tags">
13780
13781
13782         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
13783
13784
13785       </div>
13786     </div>
13787     <div class="padding"></div>
13788
13789     <div class="entry">
13790       <div class="title">
13791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
13792       </div>
13793       <div class="date">
13794         30th April 2011
13795       </div>
13796       <div class="body">
13797         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
13798 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
13799 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
13800 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
13801 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
13802 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
13803 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
13804 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
13805 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
13806 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
13807
13808 <p>Where is it?  Visit
13809 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
13810 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
13811 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
13812 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
13813
13814       </div>
13815       <div class="tags">
13816
13817
13818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
13819
13820
13821       </div>
13822     </div>
13823     <div class="padding"></div>
13824
13825     <div class="entry">
13826       <div class="title">
13827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
13828       </div>
13829       <div class="date">
13830         29th April 2011
13831       </div>
13832       <div class="body">
13833         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
13834 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
13835 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
13836 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
13837 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
13838 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
13839 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
13840 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
13841 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
13842 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
13843 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
13844 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
13845 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
13846
13847 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
13848 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
13849 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
13850 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
13851 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
13852 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
13853 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
13854 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
13855 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
13856 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
13857 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
13858 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
13859 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
13860
13861 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
13862 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
13863 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
13864 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
13865 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
13866 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
13867 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
13868 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
13869 it.</p>
13870
13871 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
13872 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
13873 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
13874 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
13875 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
13876 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
13877 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
13878
13879 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
13880 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
13881 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
13882 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
13883 and range= options.</p>
13884
13885 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
13886 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
13887 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
13888 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
13889 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
13890 to best handle this.  I've noticed
13891 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
13892 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
13893 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
13894 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
13895
13896 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
13897 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
13898 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
13899 discussions instead of only
13900 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
13901 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
13902 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
13903 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
13904 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
13905 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
13906
13907       </div>
13908       <div class="tags">
13909
13910
13911         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
13912
13913
13914       </div>
13915     </div>
13916     <div class="padding"></div>
13917
13918     <div class="entry">
13919       <div class="title">
13920         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
13921       </div>
13922       <div class="date">
13923          6th April 2011
13924       </div>
13925       <div class="body">
13926         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
13927 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
13928 A few days ago the project
13929 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
13930 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
13931 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
13932 into Gnash.</p>
13933
13934       </div>
13935       <div class="tags">
13936
13937
13938         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13939
13940
13941       </div>
13942     </div>
13943     <div class="padding"></div>
13944
13945     <div class="entry">
13946       <div class="title">
13947         <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>
13948       </div>
13949       <div class="date">
13950          3rd April 2011
13951       </div>
13952       <div class="body">
13953         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
13954 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
13955 update in English.</p>
13956
13957 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
13958 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
13959 of the British service
13960 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
13961 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
13962 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
13963 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
13964 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
13965 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
13966 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
13967 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
13968 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
13969 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
13970 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
13971 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
13972 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
13973
13974 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
13975 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
13976 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
13977 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
13978 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
13979 public infrastructure.</p>
13980
13981 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
13982 such service?</p>
13983
13984       </div>
13985       <div class="tags">
13986
13987
13988         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>.
13989
13990
13991       </div>
13992     </div>
13993     <div class="padding"></div>
13994
13995     <div class="entry">
13996       <div class="title">
13997         <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>
13998       </div>
13999       <div class="date">
14000         28th January 2011
14001       </div>
14002       <div class="body">
14003         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
14004 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
14005 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
14006 available on the Internet, and check our locally
14007 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
14008 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
14009 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
14010 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
14011 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
14012 out which security holes were present in our free software
14013 collection.</p>
14014
14015 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
14016 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
14017 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
14018 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
14019 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
14020 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
14021 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
14022 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
14023 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
14024 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
14025 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
14026 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
14027 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
14028 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
14029 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
14030 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
14031
14032 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
14033 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
14034 check out, one could look up
14035 <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
14036 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
14037 The most recent one is
14038 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
14039 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
14040 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
14041
14042 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
14043 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
14044 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
14045 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
14046 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
14047 security issues out.</p>
14048
14049 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
14050 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
14051 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
14052 RHEL is providing
14053 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
14054 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
14055 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
14056
14057 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
14058 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
14059 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
14060 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
14061 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
14062 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
14063 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
14064 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
14065 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
14066 established soon.</p>
14067
14068 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
14069 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
14070 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
14071 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
14072 for their packages.</p>
14073
14074       </div>
14075       <div class="tags">
14076
14077
14078         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>.
14079
14080
14081       </div>
14082     </div>
14083     <div class="padding"></div>
14084
14085     <div class="entry">
14086       <div class="title">
14087         <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>
14088       </div>
14089       <div class="date">
14090         23rd January 2011
14091       </div>
14092       <div class="body">
14093         <p>In the
14094 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
14095 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
14096 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
14097 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
14098 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
14099 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
14100 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
14101 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
14102 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
14103 one of my machines like this:</p>
14104
14105 <pre>
14106 loaded modules:
14107 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
14108 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
14109 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
14110 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
14111 10de:03ec pata_amd
14112 10de:03f6 sata_nv
14113 1022:1103 k8temp
14114 109e:036e bttv
14115 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
14116 11ab:4364 sky2
14117 </pre>
14118
14119 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
14120 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
14121
14122 <pre>
14123 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
14124     echo loaded pci modules:
14125     (
14126         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
14127         for address in * ; do
14128             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
14129                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
14130                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
14131                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
14132                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
14133                     echo "$id $module"
14134                 fi
14135             fi
14136         done
14137     )
14138     echo
14139 fi
14140 </pre>
14141
14142 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
14143 mappings:</p>
14144
14145 <pre>
14146 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
14147     echo loaded usb modules:
14148     (
14149         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
14150         for address in * ; do
14151             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
14152                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
14153                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
14154                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
14155                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
14156                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
14157                         echo "$id $module"
14158                     fi
14159                 fi
14160             fi
14161         done
14162     )
14163     echo
14164 fi
14165 </pre>
14166
14167 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
14168 well.</p>
14169
14170       </div>
14171       <div class="tags">
14172
14173
14174         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>.
14175
14176
14177       </div>
14178     </div>
14179     <div class="padding"></div>
14180
14181     <div class="entry">
14182       <div class="title">
14183         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
14184       </div>
14185       <div class="date">
14186         16th January 2011
14187       </div>
14188       <div class="body">
14189         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
14190 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
14191 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
14192 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
14193 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
14194 the Wikipedia article on
14195 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
14196 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
14197 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
14198 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
14199 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
14200 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
14201 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
14202 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
14203 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
14204 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
14205 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
14206 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
14207
14208 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
14209 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
14210 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
14211 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
14212 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
14213 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
14214 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
14215 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
14216 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
14217 from last week</a>.</p>
14218
14219 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
14220 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
14221 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
14222 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
14223 was without royalties and license terms, check out
14224 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
14225 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
14226
14227 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
14228 available from
14229 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
14230 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
14231 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
14232
14233 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
14234 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
14235 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
14236 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
14237
14238       </div>
14239       <div class="tags">
14240
14241
14242         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14243
14244
14245       </div>
14246     </div>
14247     <div class="padding"></div>
14248
14249     <div class="entry">
14250       <div class="title">
14251         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
14252       </div>
14253       <div class="date">
14254         12th January 2011
14255       </div>
14256       <div class="body">
14257         <p>Today I discovered
14258 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
14259 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
14260 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
14261 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
14262 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
14263 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
14264 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
14265 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
14266 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
14267 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
14268 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
14269 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
14270 on the Google announcement is available from
14271 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
14272 A good read. :)</p>
14273
14274 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
14275 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
14276 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
14277 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
14278 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
14279 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
14280 browsers support H.264, and others support
14281 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
14282 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
14283 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
14284 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
14285 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
14286 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
14287 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
14288 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
14289
14290 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
14291 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
14292 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
14293 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
14294 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
14295 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
14296 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
14297
14298 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
14299 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
14300 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
14301 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
14302 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
14303 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
14304 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
14305
14306 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
14307 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
14308 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
14309 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
14310 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
14311 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
14312 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
14313
14314 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
14315 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
14316 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
14317 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
14318 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
14319 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
14320 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
14321 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
14322 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
14323 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
14324 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
14325 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
14326 I guess time will tell.</p>
14327
14328 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
14329 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
14330 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
14331
14332       </div>
14333       <div class="tags">
14334
14335
14336         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14337
14338
14339       </div>
14340     </div>
14341     <div class="padding"></div>
14342
14343     <div class="entry">
14344       <div class="title">
14345         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
14346       </div>
14347       <div class="date">
14348         30th December 2010
14349       </div>
14350       <div class="body">
14351         <p>After trying to
14352 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
14353 Ogg Theora</a> to
14354 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
14355 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
14356 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
14357 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
14358 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
14359 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
14360 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
14361
14362 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
14363 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
14364 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
14365 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
14366 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
14367 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
14368 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
14369
14370 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
14371 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
14372
14373       </div>
14374       <div class="tags">
14375
14376
14377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
14378
14379
14380       </div>
14381     </div>
14382     <div class="padding"></div>
14383
14384     <div class="entry">
14385       <div class="title">
14386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
14387       </div>
14388       <div class="date">
14389         27th December 2010
14390       </div>
14391       <div class="body">
14392         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
14393 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
14394 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
14395 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
14396 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
14397 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
14398 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
14399 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
14400
14401 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
14402 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
14403 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
14404 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
14405 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
14406 page</a>.</p>
14407
14408 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
14409 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
14410 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
14411 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
14412 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
14413 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
14414 specification on equal terms.</p>
14415
14416 <blockquote>
14417
14418 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
14419 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
14420 open standard:</p>
14421
14422 <ul>
14423
14424 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
14425 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
14426 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
14427 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
14428
14429 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
14430 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
14431 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
14432 nominal fee.</li>
14433
14434 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
14435 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
14436 free basis.</li>
14437
14438 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
14439
14440 </ul>
14441 </blockquote>
14442
14443 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
14444 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
14445 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
14446 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
14447 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
14448 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
14449 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
14450
14451 <blockquote>
14452
14453 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
14454
14455 <ol>
14456
14457 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
14458 tilgængelig.</li>
14459
14460 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
14461 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
14462
14463 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
14464 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
14465
14466 </ol>
14467
14468 </blockquote>
14469
14470 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
14471 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
14472
14473 <blockquote>
14474
14475 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
14476
14477 <ol>
14478
14479 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
14480 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
14481
14482 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
14483 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
14484 Standard themselves;</li>
14485
14486 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
14487 any party or in any business model;</li>
14488
14489 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
14490 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
14491 parties;</li>
14492
14493 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
14494 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
14495 parties.</li>
14496
14497 </ol>
14498
14499 </blockquote>
14500
14501 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
14502 its
14503 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
14504 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
14505
14506 <blockquote>
14507 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
14508
14509 <ul>
14510
14511 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
14512   democratic:
14513
14514          <ul>
14515
14516          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
14517             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
14518             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
14519             and managed.</li>
14520
14521          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
14522             method, can be changed through input from all
14523             participants.</li>
14524
14525          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
14526             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
14527
14528          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
14529             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
14530
14531          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
14532             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
14533             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
14534
14535          </ul>
14536
14537 </li>
14538
14539 </ul>
14540
14541 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
14542 <ul>
14543
14544 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
14545   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
14546   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
14547   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
14548   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
14549
14550 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
14551   a technical or economic barriers</li>
14552
14553 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
14554   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
14555   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
14556   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
14557   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
14558   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
14559   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
14560   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
14561   intended to function.</li>
14562
14563 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
14564   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
14565   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
14566
14567 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
14568   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
14569   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
14570   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
14571   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
14572   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
14573   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
14574   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
14575
14576       <ul>
14577
14578       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
14579         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
14580         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
14581
14582       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
14583         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
14584         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
14585         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
14586
14587       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
14588         licensor</li>
14589
14590       </ul>
14591 </li>
14592
14593 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
14594   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
14595   or restricted licensing terms</li>
14596
14597 </ul>
14598
14599 </blockquote>
14600
14601 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
14602 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
14603 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
14604 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
14605 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
14606 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
14607 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
14608 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
14609 Standards.</p>
14610
14611       </div>
14612       <div class="tags">
14613
14614
14615         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
14616
14617
14618       </div>
14619     </div>
14620     <div class="padding"></div>
14621
14622     <div class="entry">
14623       <div class="title">
14624         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
14625       </div>
14626       <div class="date">
14627         25th December 2010
14628       </div>
14629       <div class="body">
14630         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
14631 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
14632
14633 <blockquote>
14634
14635 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
14636 as follows:</p>
14637
14638 <ol>
14639
14640 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
14641 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
14642 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
14643
14644 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
14645 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
14646 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
14647 parties.</li>
14648
14649 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
14650 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
14651 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
14652
14653 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
14654 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
14655
14656 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
14657
14658 </ol>
14659
14660 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
14661 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
14662 products based on the standard.</p>
14663 </blockquote>
14664
14665 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
14666 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
14667 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
14668 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
14669 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
14670 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
14671 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
14672 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
14673
14674 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
14675
14676 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
14677 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
14678 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
14679 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
14680 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
14681 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
14682 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
14683 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
14684 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
14685 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
14686 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
14687 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
14688 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
14689 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
14690
14691 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
14692
14693 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
14694 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
14695 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
14696 documentation indicating this.</p>
14697
14698 <p>According to
14699 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
14700 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
14701 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
14702 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
14703 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
14704 report is correct.</p>
14705
14706 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
14707
14708 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
14709 container format</a> and both the
14710 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
14711 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
14712 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
14713
14714 <blockquote>
14715
14716 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
14717 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
14718 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
14719 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
14720 specification compliance.
14721
14722 </blockquote>
14723
14724 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
14725 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
14726 this is the term:<p>
14727
14728 <blockquote>
14729
14730 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
14731 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
14732 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
14733 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
14734 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
14735 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
14736 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
14737 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
14738 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
14739 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
14740 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
14741 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
14742
14743 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
14744 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
14745 </blockquote>
14746
14747 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
14748 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
14749 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
14750 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
14751 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
14752
14753 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
14754
14755 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
14756 Theora format.
14757 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
14758 and
14759 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
14760 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
14761 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
14762 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
14763 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
14764 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
14765 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
14766 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
14767
14768 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
14769
14770 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
14771
14772 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
14773
14774 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
14775 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
14776 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
14777 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
14778 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
14779 this.</p>
14780
14781 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
14782 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
14783
14784       </div>
14785       <div class="tags">
14786
14787
14788         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14789
14790
14791       </div>
14792     </div>
14793     <div class="padding"></div>
14794
14795     <div class="entry">
14796       <div class="title">
14797         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
14798       </div>
14799       <div class="date">
14800         25th December 2010
14801       </div>
14802       <div class="body">
14803         <p>A few days ago
14804 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
14805 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
14806 2.0 of
14807 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
14808 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
14809 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
14810 Nothing very surprising there, given
14811 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
14812 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
14813 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
14814 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
14815 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
14816 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
14817 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
14818 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
14819 standard definition from its content.</p>
14820
14821 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
14822 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
14823 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
14824 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
14825 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
14826 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
14827 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
14828 background information about that story is available in
14829 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
14830 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
14831
14832 <blockquote>
14833 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
14834 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
14835 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
14836
14837 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
14838
14839 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
14840
14841 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
14842
14843 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
14844
14845 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
14846
14847 <p>
14848 <ul>
14849 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
14850 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
14851 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
14852 </ul>
14853 </p>
14854
14855 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
14856
14857 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
14858
14859 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
14860
14861 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
14862
14863 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
14864
14865
14866 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
14867 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
14868 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
14869 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
14870 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
14871 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
14872
14873 </p>
14874
14875 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
14876
14877 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
14878
14879 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
14880
14881 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
14882
14883 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
14884
14885 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
14886
14887 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
14888
14889 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
14890
14891 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
14892
14893 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
14894
14895 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
14896
14897 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
14898
14899 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
14900
14901 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
14902
14903 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
14904
14905 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
14906
14907 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
14908
14909 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
14910
14911 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
14912
14913 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
14914
14915 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
14916
14917 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
14918
14919 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
14920
14921 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
14922
14923 <p>On security:</p>
14924
14925 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
14926
14927 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
14928
14929 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
14930
14931 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
14932
14933 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
14934
14935 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
14936
14937 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
14938
14939 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
14940
14941 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
14942
14943 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
14944
14945 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
14946
14947 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
14948
14949 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
14950
14951 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
14952
14953 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
14954
14955 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
14956
14957 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
14958
14959 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
14960
14961 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
14962
14963 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
14964
14965 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
14966
14967 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
14968
14969 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
14970
14971 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
14972
14973 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
14974
14975 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
14976
14977 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
14978
14979 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
14980
14981 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
14982
14983 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
14984
14985 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
14986
14987 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
14988
14989 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
14990
14991 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
14992
14993 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
14994
14995 <p>Cordially,<br>
14996 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
14997 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
14998 </blockquote>
14999
15000       </div>
15001       <div class="tags">
15002
15003
15004         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15005
15006
15007       </div>
15008     </div>
15009     <div class="padding"></div>
15010
15011     <div class="entry">
15012       <div class="title">
15013         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
15014       </div>
15015       <div class="date">
15016         25th December 2010
15017       </div>
15018       <div class="body">
15019         <p>Half a year ago I
15020 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
15021 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
15022 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
15023 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
15024
15025 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
15026 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
15027 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
15028 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
15029 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
15030 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
15031 got such a great test tool available.</p>
15032
15033       </div>
15034       <div class="tags">
15035
15036
15037         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15038
15039
15040       </div>
15041     </div>
15042     <div class="padding"></div>
15043
15044     <div class="entry">
15045       <div class="title">
15046         <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>
15047       </div>
15048       <div class="date">
15049         22nd December 2010
15050       </div>
15051       <div class="body">
15052         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
15053 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
15054 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
15055 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
15056 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
15057 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
15058 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
15059 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
15060 university.</p>
15061
15062 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
15063 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
15064 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
15065 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
15066 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
15067 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
15068 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
15069 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
15070
15071 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
15072 I perform on a new model.</p>
15073
15074 <ul>
15075
15076 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
15077 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
15078 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
15079
15080 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
15081 installation, X.org is working.</li>
15082
15083 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
15084 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
15085 reported by the program.</li>
15086
15087 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
15088 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
15089 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
15090 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
15091 normally test this by playing
15092 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
15093 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
15094
15095 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
15096 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
15097
15098 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
15099 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
15100
15101 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
15102 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
15103
15104 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
15105 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
15106 few.</li>
15107
15108 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
15109 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
15110 notice this.</li>
15111
15112 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
15113 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
15114 resume.</li>
15115
15116 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
15117 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
15118 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
15119 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
15120 not.</li>
15121
15122 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
15123 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
15124 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
15125 existence.</li>
15126
15127 </ul>
15128
15129 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
15130 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
15131 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
15132 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
15133 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
15134 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
15135 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
15136 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
15137
15138       </div>
15139       <div class="tags">
15140
15141
15142         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>.
15143
15144
15145       </div>
15146     </div>
15147     <div class="padding"></div>
15148
15149     <div class="entry">
15150       <div class="title">
15151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
15152       </div>
15153       <div class="date">
15154         11th December 2010
15155       </div>
15156       <div class="body">
15157         <p>As I continue to explore
15158 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
15159 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
15160 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
15161
15162 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
15163 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
15164 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
15165 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
15166 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
15167 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
15168 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
15169 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
15170 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
15171 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
15172 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
15173 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
15174 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
15175 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
15176 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
15177 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
15178 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
15179 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
15180 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
15181 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
15182
15183 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
15184 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
15185 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
15186 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
15187 If the Skolelinux foundation
15188 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
15189 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
15190 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
15191 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
15192 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
15193 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
15194 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
15195 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
15196
15197 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
15198 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
15199 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
15200 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
15201 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
15202 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
15203 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
15204 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
15205 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
15206 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
15207 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
15208 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
15209 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
15210 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
15211 currencies.</p>
15212
15213 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
15214 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
15215 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
15216 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
15217 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
15218 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
15219 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
15220 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
15221 BitCoins.  Check out
15222 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
15223 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
15224 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
15225 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
15226 yet.</p>
15227
15228 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
15229 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
15230 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
15231 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
15232 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
15233
15234       </div>
15235       <div class="tags">
15236
15237
15238         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>.
15239
15240
15241       </div>
15242     </div>
15243     <div class="padding"></div>
15244
15245     <div class="entry">
15246       <div class="title">
15247         <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>
15248       </div>
15249       <div class="date">
15250         10th December 2010
15251       </div>
15252       <div class="body">
15253         <p>With this weeks lawless
15254 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
15255 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
15256 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
15257 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
15258 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
15259 A blog post from
15260 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
15261 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
15262 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
15263 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
15264 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
15265 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
15266 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
15267
15268 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
15269 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
15270 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
15271 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
15272 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
15273 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
15274 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
15275 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
15276 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
15277 Debian</a> soon.</p>
15278
15279 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
15280 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
15281 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
15282 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
15283 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
15284 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
15285 you can even get
15286 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
15287 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
15288 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
15289 on the current exchange rates.</p>
15290
15291 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
15292 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
15293 donations to the address
15294 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
15295
15296       </div>
15297       <div class="tags">
15298
15299
15300         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>.
15301
15302
15303       </div>
15304     </div>
15305     <div class="padding"></div>
15306
15307     <div class="entry">
15308       <div class="title">
15309         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
15310       </div>
15311       <div class="date">
15312          9th December 2010
15313       </div>
15314       <div class="body">
15315         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
15316 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
15317 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
15318 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
15319 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
15320 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
15321 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
15322 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
15323 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
15324 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
15325 operational.</p>
15326
15327 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
15328 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
15329 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
15330 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
15331 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
15332 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
15333 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
15334
15335       </div>
15336       <div class="tags">
15337
15338
15339         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
15340
15341
15342       </div>
15343     </div>
15344     <div class="padding"></div>
15345
15346     <div class="entry">
15347       <div class="title">
15348         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
15349       </div>
15350       <div class="date">
15351         29th November 2010
15352       </div>
15353       <div class="body">
15354         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
15355 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
15356 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
15357 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
15358 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
15359 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
15360
15361 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
15362 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
15363 will hold its
15364 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
15365 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
15366 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
15367 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
15368 vote this year.</p>
15369
15370       </div>
15371       <div class="tags">
15372
15373
15374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15375
15376
15377       </div>
15378     </div>
15379     <div class="padding"></div>
15380
15381     <div class="entry">
15382       <div class="title">
15383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
15384       </div>
15385       <div class="date">
15386         27th November 2010
15387       </div>
15388       <div class="body">
15389         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
15390 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
15391 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
15392 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
15393 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
15394 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
15395 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
15396 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
15397
15398 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
15399 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
15400 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
15401 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
15402 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
15403 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
15404 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
15405 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
15406 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
15407 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
15408 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
15409
15410 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
15411 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
15412 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
15413 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
15414 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
15415 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
15416 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
15417 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
15418 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
15419 what is going on.</p>
15420
15421       </div>
15422       <div class="tags">
15423
15424
15425         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>.
15426
15427
15428       </div>
15429     </div>
15430     <div class="padding"></div>
15431
15432     <div class="entry">
15433       <div class="title">
15434         <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>
15435       </div>
15436       <div class="date">
15437         22nd November 2010
15438       </div>
15439       <div class="body">
15440         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
15441 upgrade testing of the
15442 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
15443 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
15444 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
15445 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
15446
15447 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
15448
15449 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15450
15451 <blockquote><p>
15452   apache2.2-bin
15453   aptdaemon
15454   baobab
15455   binfmt-support
15456   browser-plugin-gnash
15457   cheese-common
15458   cli-common
15459   cups-pk-helper
15460   dmz-cursor-theme
15461   empathy
15462   empathy-common
15463   freedesktop-sound-theme
15464   freeglut3
15465   gconf-defaults-service
15466   gdm-themes
15467   gedit-plugins
15468   geoclue
15469   geoclue-hostip
15470   geoclue-localnet
15471   geoclue-manual
15472   geoclue-yahoo
15473   gnash
15474   gnash-common
15475   gnome
15476   gnome-backgrounds
15477   gnome-cards-data
15478   gnome-codec-install
15479   gnome-core
15480   gnome-desktop-environment
15481   gnome-disk-utility
15482   gnome-screenshot
15483   gnome-search-tool
15484   gnome-session-canberra
15485   gnome-system-log
15486   gnome-themes-extras
15487   gnome-themes-more
15488   gnome-user-share
15489   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
15490   gstreamer0.10-tools
15491   gtk2-engines
15492   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
15493   gtk2-engines-smooth
15494   hamster-applet
15495   libapache2-mod-dnssd
15496   libapr1
15497   libaprutil1
15498   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
15499   libaprutil1-ldap
15500   libart2.0-cil
15501   libboost-date-time1.42.0
15502   libboost-python1.42.0
15503   libboost-thread1.42.0
15504   libchamplain-0.4-0
15505   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
15506   libcheese-gtk18
15507   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
15508   libcryptui0
15509   libdiscid0
15510   libelf1
15511   libepc-1.0-2
15512   libepc-common
15513   libepc-ui-1.0-2
15514   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
15515   libfreerdp0
15516   libgconf2.0-cil
15517   libgdata-common
15518   libgdata7
15519   libgdu-gtk0
15520   libgee2
15521   libgeoclue0
15522   libgexiv2-0
15523   libgif4
15524   libglade2.0-cil
15525   libglib2.0-cil
15526   libgmime2.4-cil
15527   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
15528   libgnome2.24-cil
15529   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
15530   libgpod-common
15531   libgpod4
15532   libgtk2.0-cil
15533   libgtkglext1
15534   libgtksourceview2.0-common
15535   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
15536   libmono-addins0.2-cil
15537   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
15538   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
15539   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
15540   libmono-posix2.0-cil
15541   libmono-security2.0-cil
15542   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
15543   libmono-system2.0-cil
15544   libmtp8
15545   libmusicbrainz3-6
15546   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
15547   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
15548   libopal3.6.8
15549   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
15550   libpt2.6.7
15551   libpython2.6
15552   librpm1
15553   librpmio1
15554   libsdl1.2debian
15555   libsrtp0
15556   libssh-4
15557   libtelepathy-farsight0
15558   libtelepathy-glib0
15559   libtidy-0.99-0
15560   media-player-info
15561   mesa-utils
15562   mono-2.0-gac
15563   mono-gac
15564   mono-runtime
15565   nautilus-sendto
15566   nautilus-sendto-empathy
15567   p7zip-full
15568   pkg-config
15569   python-aptdaemon
15570   python-aptdaemon-gtk
15571   python-axiom
15572   python-beautifulsoup
15573   python-bugbuddy
15574   python-clientform
15575   python-coherence
15576   python-configobj
15577   python-crypto
15578   python-cupshelpers
15579   python-elementtree
15580   python-epsilon
15581   python-evolution
15582   python-feedparser
15583   python-gdata
15584   python-gdbm
15585   python-gst0.10
15586   python-gtkglext1
15587   python-gtksourceview2
15588   python-httplib2
15589   python-louie
15590   python-mako
15591   python-markupsafe
15592   python-mechanize
15593   python-nevow
15594   python-notify
15595   python-opengl
15596   python-openssl
15597   python-pam
15598   python-pkg-resources
15599   python-pyasn1
15600   python-pysqlite2
15601   python-rdflib
15602   python-serial
15603   python-tagpy
15604   python-twisted-bin
15605   python-twisted-conch
15606   python-twisted-core
15607   python-twisted-web
15608   python-utidylib
15609   python-webkit
15610   python-xdg
15611   python-zope.interface
15612   remmina
15613   remmina-plugin-data
15614   remmina-plugin-rdp
15615   remmina-plugin-vnc
15616   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
15617   rhythmbox-plugins
15618   rpm-common
15619   rpm2cpio
15620   seahorse-plugins
15621   shotwell
15622   software-center
15623   system-config-printer-udev
15624   telepathy-gabble
15625   telepathy-mission-control-5
15626   telepathy-salut
15627   tomboy
15628   totem
15629   totem-coherence
15630   totem-mozilla
15631   totem-plugins
15632   transmission-common
15633   xdg-user-dirs
15634   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
15635   xserver-xephyr
15636 </p></blockquote>
15637
15638 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
15639
15640 <blockquote><p>
15641   cheese
15642   ekiga
15643   eog
15644   epiphany-extensions
15645   evolution-exchange
15646   fast-user-switch-applet
15647   file-roller
15648   gcalctool
15649   gconf-editor
15650   gdm
15651   gedit
15652   gedit-common
15653   gnome-games
15654   gnome-games-data
15655   gnome-nettool
15656   gnome-system-tools
15657   gnome-themes
15658   gnuchess
15659   gucharmap
15660   guile-1.8-libs
15661   libavahi-ui0
15662   libdmx1
15663   libgalago3
15664   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
15665   libgtksourceview2.0-0
15666   liblircclient0
15667   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
15668   libspeexdsp1
15669   libsvga1
15670   rhythmbox
15671   seahorse
15672   sound-juicer
15673   system-config-printer
15674   totem-common
15675   transmission-gtk
15676   vinagre
15677   vino
15678 </p></blockquote>
15679
15680 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15681
15682 <blockquote><p>
15683   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
15684 </p></blockquote>
15685
15686 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15687
15688 <blockquote><p>
15689 [nothing]
15690 </p></blockquote>
15691
15692 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
15693
15694 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15695
15696 <blockquote><p>
15697   ksmserver
15698 </p></blockquote>
15699
15700 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
15701
15702 <blockquote><p>
15703   kwin
15704   network-manager-kde
15705 </p></blockquote>
15706
15707 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15708
15709 <blockquote><p>
15710   arts
15711   dolphin
15712   freespacenotifier
15713   google-gadgets-gst
15714   google-gadgets-xul
15715   kappfinder
15716   kcalc
15717   kcharselect
15718   kde-core
15719   kde-plasma-desktop
15720   kde-standard
15721   kde-window-manager
15722   kdeartwork
15723   kdeartwork-emoticons
15724   kdeartwork-style
15725   kdeartwork-theme-icon
15726   kdebase
15727   kdebase-apps
15728   kdebase-workspace
15729   kdebase-workspace-bin
15730   kdebase-workspace-data
15731   kdeeject
15732   kdelibs
15733   kdeplasma-addons
15734   kdeutils
15735   kdewallpapers
15736   kdf
15737   kfloppy
15738   kgpg
15739   khelpcenter4
15740   kinfocenter
15741   konq-plugins-l10n
15742   konqueror-nsplugins
15743   kscreensaver
15744   kscreensaver-xsavers
15745   ktimer
15746   kwrite
15747   libgle3
15748   libkde4-ruby1.8
15749   libkonq5
15750   libkonq5-templates
15751   libnetpbm10
15752   libplasma-ruby
15753   libplasma-ruby1.8
15754   libqt4-ruby1.8
15755   marble-data
15756   marble-plugins
15757   netpbm
15758   nuvola-icon-theme
15759   plasma-dataengines-workspace
15760   plasma-desktop
15761   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
15762   plasma-runners-addons
15763   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
15764   plasma-scriptengine-python
15765   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
15766   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
15767   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
15768   plasma-scriptengines
15769   plasma-wallpapers-addons
15770   plasma-widget-folderview
15771   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
15772   ruby
15773   sweeper
15774   update-notifier-kde
15775   xscreensaver-data-extra
15776   xscreensaver-gl
15777   xscreensaver-gl-extra
15778   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
15779 </p></blockquote>
15780
15781 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15782
15783 <blockquote><p>
15784   ark
15785   google-gadgets-common
15786   google-gadgets-qt
15787   htdig
15788   kate
15789   kdebase-bin
15790   kdebase-data
15791   kdepasswd
15792   kfind
15793   klipper
15794   konq-plugins
15795   konqueror
15796   ksysguard
15797   ksysguardd
15798   libarchive1
15799   libcln6
15800   libeet1
15801   libeina-svn-06
15802   libggadget-1.0-0b
15803   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
15804   libgps19
15805   libkdecorations4
15806   libkephal4
15807   libkonq4
15808   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
15809   libkscreensaver5
15810   libksgrd4
15811   libksignalplotter4
15812   libkunitconversion4
15813   libkwineffects1a
15814   libmarblewidget4
15815   libntrack-qt4-1
15816   libntrack0
15817   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
15818   libplasmaclock4a
15819   libplasmagenericshell4
15820   libprocesscore4a
15821   libprocessui4a
15822   libqalculate5
15823   libqedje0a
15824   libqtruby4shared2
15825   libqzion0a
15826   libruby1.8
15827   libscim8c2a
15828   libsmokekdecore4-3
15829   libsmokekdeui4-3
15830   libsmokekfile3
15831   libsmokekhtml3
15832   libsmokekio3
15833   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
15834   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
15835   libsmokekparts3
15836   libsmokektexteditor3
15837   libsmokekutils3
15838   libsmokenepomuk3
15839   libsmokephonon3
15840   libsmokeplasma3
15841   libsmokeqtcore4-3
15842   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
15843   libsmokeqtgui4-3
15844   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
15845   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
15846   libsmokeqtscript4-3
15847   libsmokeqtsql4-3
15848   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
15849   libsmokeqttest4-3
15850   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
15851   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
15852   libsmokeqtxml4-3
15853   libsmokesolid3
15854   libsmokesoprano3
15855   libtaskmanager4a
15856   libtidy-0.99-0
15857   libweather-ion4a
15858   libxklavier16
15859   libxxf86misc1
15860   okteta
15861   oxygencursors
15862   plasma-dataengines-addons
15863   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
15864   plasma-widget-lancelot
15865   plasma-widgets-addons
15866   plasma-widgets-workspace
15867   polkit-kde-1
15868   ruby1.8
15869   systemsettings
15870   update-notifier-common
15871 </p></blockquote>
15872
15873 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
15874 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
15875 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
15876 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
15877
15878       </div>
15879       <div class="tags">
15880
15881
15882         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>.
15883
15884
15885       </div>
15886     </div>
15887     <div class="padding"></div>
15888
15889     <div class="entry">
15890       <div class="title">
15891         <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>
15892       </div>
15893       <div class="date">
15894         22nd November 2010
15895       </div>
15896       <div class="body">
15897         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
15898 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
15899 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
15900 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
15901 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
15902 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
15903 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
15904 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
15905 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
15906
15907 <p>I found
15908 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
15909 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
15910 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
15911 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
15912 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
15913 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
15914
15915 <pre>
15916 #!/bin/sh
15917
15918 # Based on
15919 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
15920
15921 set -e
15922 set -x
15923
15924 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
15925     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
15926     exit 1
15927 else
15928     host="$1"
15929 fi
15930
15931 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
15932     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
15933     exit 1
15934 fi
15935
15936 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
15937 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
15938 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
15939 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
15940
15941 img=$host.img
15942 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
15943 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
15944
15945 parted $img mklabel msdos
15946 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
15947 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
15948 parted $img set 1 boot on
15949
15950 modprobe dm-mod
15951 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
15952 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
15953
15954 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
15955 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
15956 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
15957
15958 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
15959 losetup -d /dev/loop0
15960 </pre>
15961
15962 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
15963 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
15964
15965 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
15966 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
15967 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
15968 seem to work just fine.</p>
15969
15970       </div>
15971       <div class="tags">
15972
15973
15974         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>.
15975
15976
15977       </div>
15978     </div>
15979     <div class="padding"></div>
15980
15981     <div class="entry">
15982       <div class="title">
15983         <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>
15984       </div>
15985       <div class="date">
15986         20th November 2010
15987       </div>
15988       <div class="body">
15989         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
15990 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
15991 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
15992 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
15993
15994 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
15995 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
15996 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
15997
15998 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
15999
16000 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16001
16002 <blockquote><p>
16003   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
16004   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
16005   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
16006   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
16007   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
16008   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
16009   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
16010   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
16011   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
16012   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
16013   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
16014   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
16015   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
16016   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
16017   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
16018   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
16019   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
16020   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
16021   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
16022   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
16023   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
16024   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
16025   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
16026   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
16027   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
16028   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
16029   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
16030   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
16031   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
16032   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
16033   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
16034   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16035   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
16036   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
16037   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
16038   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
16039   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
16040   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
16041   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
16042   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
16043   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
16044   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
16045   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
16046   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
16047   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
16048   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
16049   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
16050   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
16051   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
16052   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
16053   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
16054   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
16055   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
16056   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
16057   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
16058   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
16059   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
16060   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
16061   zip
16062 </p></blockquote>
16063
16064 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
16065
16066 <blockquote><p>
16067   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
16068   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
16069   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
16070   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
16071   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
16072   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
16073   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
16074   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
16075   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
16076   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
16077   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
16078   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
16079   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
16080   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16081   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
16082   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
16083   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
16084   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
16085   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
16086   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
16087   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
16088   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
16089   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
16090   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
16091   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
16092   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
16093   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
16094   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
16095   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
16096 </p></blockquote>
16097
16098 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16099
16100 <blockquote><p>
16101   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16102 </p></blockquote>
16103
16104 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16105
16106 <blockquote><p>
16107 [nothing]
16108 </p></blockquote>
16109
16110 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
16111
16112 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16113
16114 <blockquote><p>
16115   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
16116   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
16117   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
16118   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
16119   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
16120   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
16121   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
16122   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
16123   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
16124   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
16125   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
16126   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
16127   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
16128   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
16129   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
16130   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
16131   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
16132   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
16133   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
16134   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
16135   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
16136   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
16137   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
16138   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
16139   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
16140   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
16141   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
16142   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
16143   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
16144   ttf-sazanami-gothic
16145 </p></blockquote>
16146
16147 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16148
16149 <blockquote><p>
16150   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
16151   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
16152   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
16153   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
16154   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
16155   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
16156   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
16157   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
16158   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
16159   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
16160   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
16161   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
16162   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
16163   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
16164   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16165   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16166   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
16167   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
16168   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16169   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
16170   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
16171   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
16172   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16173   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16174   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
16175   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
16176   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
16177   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
16178   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
16179   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
16180   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
16181   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
16182   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
16183 </p></blockquote>
16184
16185 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16186
16187 <blockquote><p>
16188   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
16189   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
16190   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
16191   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
16192   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
16193   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
16194   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
16195 </p></blockquote>
16196
16197 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16198
16199 <blockquote><p>
16200   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
16201 </p></blockquote>
16202
16203       </div>
16204       <div class="tags">
16205
16206
16207         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>.
16208
16209
16210       </div>
16211     </div>
16212     <div class="padding"></div>
16213
16214     <div class="entry">
16215       <div class="title">
16216         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
16217       </div>
16218       <div class="date">
16219         20th November 2010
16220       </div>
16221       <div class="body">
16222         <p>Answering
16223 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
16224 call from the Gnash project</a> for
16225 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
16226 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
16227 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
16228 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
16229 releases out more often.</p>
16230
16231 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
16232 I have considered setting up a <a
16233 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
16234 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
16235 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
16236 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
16237 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
16238 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
16239 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
16240 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
16241 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
16242 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
16243 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
16244 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
16245
16246       </div>
16247       <div class="tags">
16248
16249
16250         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>.
16251
16252
16253       </div>
16254     </div>
16255     <div class="padding"></div>
16256
16257     <div class="entry">
16258       <div class="title">
16259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
16260       </div>
16261       <div class="date">
16262          9th November 2010
16263       </div>
16264       <div class="body">
16265         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
16266
16267 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
16268 3D linked in from
16269 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
16270 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
16271
16272       </div>
16273       <div class="tags">
16274
16275
16276         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>.
16277
16278
16279       </div>
16280     </div>
16281     <div class="padding"></div>
16282
16283     <div class="entry">
16284       <div class="title">
16285         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
16286       </div>
16287       <div class="date">
16288          7th November 2010
16289       </div>
16290       <div class="body">
16291         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
16292 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
16293 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
16294 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
16295 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
16296 working using this DVD.</p>
16297
16298 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
16299 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
16300 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
16301 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
16302 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
16303 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
16304 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
16305
16306 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
16307 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
16308 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
16309 Debian archive.</p>
16310
16311 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
16312 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
16313 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
16314 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
16315 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
16316 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
16317 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
16318 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
16319 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
16320 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
16321 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
16322 free X driver should work.</p>
16323
16324 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
16325 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
16326 DVD more useful again.</p>
16327
16328       </div>
16329       <div class="tags">
16330
16331
16332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16333
16334
16335       </div>
16336     </div>
16337     <div class="padding"></div>
16338
16339     <div class="entry">
16340       <div class="title">
16341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
16342       </div>
16343       <div class="date">
16344         24th October 2010
16345       </div>
16346       <div class="body">
16347         <p>Some updates.</p>
16348
16349 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
16350 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
16351 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
16352 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
16353 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
16354 :)</p>
16355
16356 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
16357 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
16358 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
16359 It is called
16360 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
16361 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
16362 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
16363 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
16364 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
16365 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
16366
16367 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
16368 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
16369 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
16370 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
16371 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
16372 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
16373 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
16374 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
16375 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
16376 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
16377
16378       </div>
16379       <div class="tags">
16380
16381
16382         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>.
16383
16384
16385       </div>
16386     </div>
16387     <div class="padding"></div>
16388
16389     <div class="entry">
16390       <div class="title">
16391         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
16392       </div>
16393       <div class="date">
16394         19th October 2010
16395       </div>
16396       <div class="body">
16397         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
16398 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
16399 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
16400 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
16401 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
16402 AVM2 flash files.</p>
16403
16404 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
16405 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
16406 following text:</P>
16407
16408 <p><blockquote>
16409
16410   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
16411   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
16412
16413   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
16414
16415   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
16416
16417   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
16418   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
16419   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
16420   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
16421   days. The project web page is available from
16422   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
16423   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
16424   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
16425
16426   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
16427   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
16428   to get this to happen.</p>
16429
16430   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
16431   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
16432
16433 </blockquote></p>
16434
16435 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
16436 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
16437 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
16438 :)</p>
16439
16440       </div>
16441       <div class="tags">
16442
16443
16444         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16445
16446
16447       </div>
16448     </div>
16449     <div class="padding"></div>
16450
16451     <div class="entry">
16452       <div class="title">
16453         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
16454       </div>
16455       <div class="date">
16456          9th October 2010
16457       </div>
16458       <div class="body">
16459         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
16460 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
16461 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
16462 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
16463 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
16464 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
16465 robots.</p>
16466
16467 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
16468 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
16469 a few less important features too.</p>
16470
16471 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
16472 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
16473 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
16474 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
16475
16476 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
16477 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
16478 source or binary package:</p>
16479
16480 <p><ul>
16481 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
16482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
16483 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
16484 </ul></p>
16485
16486 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
16487 please let me know.</p>
16488
16489       </div>
16490       <div class="tags">
16491
16492
16493         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
16494
16495
16496       </div>
16497     </div>
16498     <div class="padding"></div>
16499
16500     <div class="entry">
16501       <div class="title">
16502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
16503       </div>
16504       <div class="date">
16505          3rd October 2010
16506       </div>
16507       <div class="body">
16508         <p><ul>
16509
16510 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
16511 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
16512
16513 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
16514 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
16515 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
16516
16517 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
16518 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
16519 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
16520 simple setup.
16521
16522 </ul></p>
16523
16524       </div>
16525       <div class="tags">
16526
16527
16528         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16529
16530
16531       </div>
16532     </div>
16533     <div class="padding"></div>
16534
16535     <div class="entry">
16536       <div class="title">
16537         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
16538       </div>
16539       <div class="date">
16540          9th September 2010
16541       </div>
16542       <div class="body">
16543         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
16544 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
16545 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
16546 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
16547 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
16548 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
16549 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
16550 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
16551 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
16552
16553 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
16554 written:</p>
16555
16556 <blockquote>
16557 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
16558 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
16559 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
16560 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
16561 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
16562
16563 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
16564 standard.</p>
16565 </blockquote>
16566
16567 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
16568 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
16569 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
16570 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
16571
16572 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
16573 read
16574 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
16575 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
16576 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
16577 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
16578 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
16579 the issue.  The solution is to support the
16580 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
16581 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
16582 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
16583
16584       </div>
16585       <div class="tags">
16586
16587
16588         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16589
16590
16591       </div>
16592     </div>
16593     <div class="padding"></div>
16594
16595     <div class="entry">
16596       <div class="title">
16597         <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>
16598       </div>
16599       <div class="date">
16600          4th September 2010
16601       </div>
16602       <div class="body">
16603         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
16604 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
16605 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
16606 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
16607 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
16608 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
16609 installed.</p>
16610
16611 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
16612 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
16613 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
16614 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
16615 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
16616 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
16617 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
16618 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
16619 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
16620
16621 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
16622 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
16623 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
16624 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
16625 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
16626 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
16627 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
16628 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
16629 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
16630 pages they want to visit.</p>
16631
16632 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
16633 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
16634 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
16635 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
16636 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
16637 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
16638 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
16639 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
16640 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
16641 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
16642 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
16643
16644       </div>
16645       <div class="tags">
16646
16647
16648         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>.
16649
16650
16651       </div>
16652     </div>
16653     <div class="padding"></div>
16654
16655     <div class="entry">
16656       <div class="title">
16657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
16658       </div>
16659       <div class="date">
16660          1st September 2010
16661       </div>
16662       <div class="body">
16663         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
16664 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
16665 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
16666 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
16667 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
16668 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
16669 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
16670 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
16671 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
16672 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
16673 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
16674 drive around.</p>
16675
16676 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
16677 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
16678
16679 <p><pre>
16680 use Spykee;
16681 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
16682 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
16683 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
16684 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
16685 $spykee->left();
16686 sleep 2;
16687 $spykee->right();
16688 sleep 2;
16689 $spykee->forward();
16690 sleep 2;
16691 $spykee->back();
16692 sleep 2;
16693 $spykee->stop();
16694 </pre></p>
16695
16696 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
16697 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
16698 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
16699 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
16700 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
16701 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
16702 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
16703 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
16704 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
16705 going. :).</p>
16706
16707 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
16708 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
16709 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
16710 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
16711
16712       </div>
16713       <div class="tags">
16714
16715
16716         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
16717
16718
16719       </div>
16720     </div>
16721     <div class="padding"></div>
16722
16723     <div class="entry">
16724       <div class="title">
16725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
16726       </div>
16727       <div class="date">
16728         30th August 2010
16729       </div>
16730       <div class="body">
16731         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
16732 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
16733 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
16734 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
16735 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
16736 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
16737 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
16738
16739 <pre>
16740 % ln foo bar
16741 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
16742 %
16743 </pre>
16744
16745 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
16746 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
16747 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
16748 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
16749 nevertheless. :)</p>
16750
16751 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
16752 git from
16753 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
16754
16755       </div>
16756       <div class="tags">
16757
16758
16759         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16760
16761
16762       </div>
16763     </div>
16764     <div class="padding"></div>
16765
16766     <div class="entry">
16767       <div class="title">
16768         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
16769       </div>
16770       <div class="date">
16771         26th August 2010
16772       </div>
16773       <div class="body">
16774         <p>My file system sematics program
16775 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
16776 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
16777 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
16778 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
16779 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
16780 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
16781 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
16782 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
16783 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
16784 script:</p>
16785
16786 <pre>
16787 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
16788   mode_t retval = 0;
16789   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
16790   if (-1 != fd) {
16791     unlink(name);
16792     struct stat statbuf;
16793     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
16794       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
16795     }
16796     close(fd);
16797   }
16798   return retval;
16799 }
16800
16801 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
16802 int test_umask(void) {
16803   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
16804
16805   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
16806   mode_t newmode;
16807   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
16808     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
16809            newmode);
16810   }
16811   umask(007);
16812   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
16813     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
16814            newmode);
16815   }
16816
16817   umask (orig_umask);
16818   return 0;
16819 }
16820
16821 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
16822   [...]
16823   test_umask();
16824   return 0;
16825 }
16826 </pre>
16827
16828 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
16829
16830 <pre>
16831 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
16832 info: testing symlink creation
16833 info: testing subdirectory creation
16834 info: testing fcntl locking
16835   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16836   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16837   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
16838   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16839   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16840   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
16841 info: testing umask effect on file creation
16842 </pre>
16843
16844 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
16845 result:</p>
16846
16847 <pre>
16848 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
16849 info: testing symlink creation
16850 info: testing subdirectory creation
16851 info: testing fcntl locking
16852   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16853   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16854   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
16855   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16856   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16857   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
16858 info: testing umask effect on file creation
16859   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
16860   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
16861 </pre>
16862
16863 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
16864 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
16865 directory.</p>
16866
16867 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
16868 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
16869
16870 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
16871 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
16872 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
16873
16874       </div>
16875       <div class="tags">
16876
16877
16878         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16879
16880
16881       </div>
16882     </div>
16883     <div class="padding"></div>
16884
16885     <div class="entry">
16886       <div class="title">
16887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
16888       </div>
16889       <div class="date">
16890         15th August 2010
16891       </div>
16892       <div class="body">
16893         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
16894 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
16895 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
16896 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
16897 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
16898 long time.</p>
16899
16900       </div>
16901       <div class="tags">
16902
16903
16904         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16905
16906
16907       </div>
16908     </div>
16909     <div class="padding"></div>
16910
16911     <div class="entry">
16912       <div class="title">
16913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
16914       </div>
16915       <div class="date">
16916          9th August 2010
16917       </div>
16918       <div class="body">
16919         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
16920 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
16921 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
16922 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
16923 generated configuration.</p>
16924
16925 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
16926 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
16927 without any manual configuration.</p>
16928
16929 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
16930 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
16931 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
16932 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
16933 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
16934 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
16935 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
16936 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
16937 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
16938 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
16939 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
16940 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
16941 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
16942 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
16943 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
16944 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
16945 use.</p>
16946
16947 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
16948 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
16949 working properly out of the box:</p>
16950
16951 <ul>
16952 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
16953 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
16954 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
16955 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
16956 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
16957 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
16958 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
16959 </ul>
16960
16961 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
16962
16963 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
16964 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
16965 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
16966 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
16967 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
16968
16969 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
16970 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
16971 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
16972 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
16973 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
16974 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
16975 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
16976 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
16977
16978 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
16979 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
16980 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
16981 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
16982 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
16983 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
16984 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
16985 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
16986 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
16987 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
16988 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
16989 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
16990 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
16991 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
16992 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
16993 current DNS domain is used.</p>
16994
16995 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
16996 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
16997 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
16998 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
16999 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
17000 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
17001 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
17002 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
17003 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
17004 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
17005 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
17006 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
17007 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
17008
17009 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
17010 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
17011 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
17012 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
17013 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
17014 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
17015 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
17016 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
17017 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
17018 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
17019 do for now. :)</p>
17020
17021 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
17022 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
17023 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
17024 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
17025 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
17026 yet.</p>
17027
17028 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
17029 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17030
17031 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
17032 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
17033 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
17034 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
17035
17036       </div>
17037       <div class="tags">
17038
17039
17040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17041
17042
17043       </div>
17044     </div>
17045     <div class="padding"></div>
17046
17047     <div class="entry">
17048       <div class="title">
17049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
17050       </div>
17051       <div class="date">
17052          8th August 2010
17053       </div>
17054       <div class="body">
17055         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
17056 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
17057 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
17058 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
17059 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
17060 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
17061 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
17062
17063 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
17064 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
17065 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
17066 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
17067 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
17068 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
17069 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
17070
17071 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
17072 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
17073 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
17074 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
17075 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
17076
17077 <pre>
17078 /*
17079  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
17080  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
17081  * directory.
17082  * License: GPL v2 or later
17083  *
17084  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
17085  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
17086 */
17087
17088 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
17089 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
17090 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
17091
17092 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
17093
17094 #include &lt;errno.h>
17095 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
17096 #include &lt;stdio.h>
17097 #include &lt;string.h>
17098 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
17099 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
17100 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
17101 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
17102 #include &lt;unistd.h>
17103
17104 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
17105 /*
17106  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
17107  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
17108  * below.
17109  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
17110  */
17111 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
17112 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
17113   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
17114 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
17115   char *zErrMsg;
17116   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
17117   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
17118   unlink(name);
17119   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
17120   if( rc ){
17121     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
17122     sqlite3_close(db);
17123     return -1;
17124   }
17125
17126   /* create tables */
17127   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
17128   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
17129     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
17130     sqlite3_close(db);
17131     return -1;
17132   }
17133   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
17134   sqlite3_close(db);
17135   return 0;
17136 }
17137 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
17138
17139 /*
17140  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
17141  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
17142  * done in the sqlite3 library.
17143  * See also
17144  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
17145  * POSIX specification
17146  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
17147  */
17148 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
17149   struct flock fl;
17150   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
17151   unlink(name);
17152   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
17153   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
17154
17155   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
17156   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
17157   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
17158   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
17159   fl.l_len    = 1;
17160   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
17161   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17162
17163   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
17164   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
17165   fl.l_len    = 510;
17166   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
17167   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17168
17169   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
17170   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
17171   fl.l_len    = 1;
17172   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
17173   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17174
17175   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
17176   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
17177   fl.l_len    = 1;
17178   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
17179   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17180
17181   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
17182   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
17183   fl.l_len    = 510;
17184   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17185
17186   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
17187   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
17188   fl.l_len    = 2;
17189   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
17190   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17191
17192   close(fd);
17193   return 0;
17194 }
17195
17196 /*
17197  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
17198  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
17199  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
17200  * slowing down file operations.
17201  */
17202 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
17203 #define LEVELS 5
17204   char *path = strdup("test");
17205   char *dirs[LEVELS];
17206   int level;
17207   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
17208   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
17209     char *newpath = NULL;
17210     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
17211       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
17212              path, strerror(errno));
17213       break;
17214     }
17215     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
17216     free(path);
17217     path = newpath;
17218   }
17219   return 0;
17220 }
17221
17222 /*
17223  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
17224  * KDE.
17225  */
17226 int test_symlinks(void) {
17227   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
17228   unlink("symlink");
17229   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
17230     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
17231   return 0;
17232 }
17233
17234 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
17235   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
17236   test_symlinks();
17237   test_subdirectory_creation();
17238 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
17239   test_sqlite_open();
17240 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
17241   test_gcompris_locking();
17242   return 0;
17243 }
17244 </pre>
17245
17246 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
17247 this:</p>
17248
17249 <pre>
17250 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17251 info: testing symlink creation
17252 info: testing subdirectory creation
17253 info: sqlite worked
17254 info: testing fcntl locking
17255   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17256   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17257   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
17258   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17259   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17260   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
17261 </pre>
17262
17263 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
17264 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
17265 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
17266 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
17267 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
17268 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
17269 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
17270 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
17271
17272 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
17273 it. :)</p>
17274
17275 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
17276 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
17277 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
17278
17279       </div>
17280       <div class="tags">
17281
17282
17283         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17284
17285
17286       </div>
17287     </div>
17288     <div class="padding"></div>
17289
17290     <div class="entry">
17291       <div class="title">
17292         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
17293       </div>
17294       <div class="date">
17295          7th August 2010
17296       </div>
17297       <div class="body">
17298         <p>A few days ago, I
17299 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
17300 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
17301 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
17302 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
17303 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
17304 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
17305 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
17306 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
17307 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
17308
17309 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
17310 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
17311 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
17312 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
17313 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
17314 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
17315 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
17316 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
17317 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
17318 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
17319 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
17320 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
17321 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
17322 gave it a IP address.</p>
17323
17324 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
17325 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
17326 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
17327 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
17328 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
17329 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
17330 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
17331 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
17332
17333 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
17334 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
17335 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
17336 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
17337 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
17338 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
17339
17340 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
17341 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
17342 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
17343 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
17344 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
17345 with UID and GID values.</p>
17346
17347 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
17348 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17349
17350       </div>
17351       <div class="tags">
17352
17353
17354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17355
17356
17357       </div>
17358     </div>
17359     <div class="padding"></div>
17360
17361     <div class="entry">
17362       <div class="title">
17363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
17364       </div>
17365       <div class="date">
17366          3rd August 2010
17367       </div>
17368       <div class="body">
17369         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
17370 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
17371 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
17372 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
17373 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
17374 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
17375 servers.</p>
17376
17377 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
17378 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
17379 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
17380 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
17381 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
17382 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
17383 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
17384 .uio.no.</p>
17385
17386 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
17387 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
17388 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
17389 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
17390 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
17391 university servers.</p>
17392
17393 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
17394 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
17395 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
17396 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
17397 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
17398 uses.</p>
17399
17400       </div>
17401       <div class="tags">
17402
17403
17404         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17405
17406
17407       </div>
17408     </div>
17409     <div class="padding"></div>
17410
17411     <div class="entry">
17412       <div class="title">
17413         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
17414       </div>
17415       <div class="date">
17416         27th July 2010
17417       </div>
17418       <div class="body">
17419         <p>I discovered this while doing
17420 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
17421 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
17422 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
17423 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
17424 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
17425
17426 <p>An example is from todays
17427 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
17428 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
17429 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
17430 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
17431 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
17432 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
17433 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
17434
17435 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
17436
17437 <blockquote><pre>
17438 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
17439  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
17440   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
17441 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
17442  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
17443 </pre></blockquote>
17444
17445 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
17446 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
17447 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
17448 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
17449 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
17450 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
17451 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
17452 of dependency loops.</p>
17453
17454 <p>Thanks to
17455 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
17456 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
17457 dependencies
17458 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
17459 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
17460
17461 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
17462 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
17463 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
17464 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
17465 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
17466 it.</p>
17467
17468       </div>
17469       <div class="tags">
17470
17471
17472         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>.
17473
17474
17475       </div>
17476     </div>
17477     <div class="padding"></div>
17478
17479     <div class="entry">
17480       <div class="title">
17481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
17482       </div>
17483       <div class="date">
17484         27th July 2010
17485       </div>
17486       <div class="body">
17487         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
17488 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
17489 completed.</p>
17490
17491 <blockquote>
17492 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
17493 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
17494 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
17495 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
17496 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
17497 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
17498 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
17499 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
17500
17501 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
17502 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
17503 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
17504
17505 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
17506 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
17507 much.</p>
17508
17509 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
17510
17511 <ul>
17512 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
17513 <ul>
17514   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
17515          combination with some new artwork
17516   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
17517   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
17518   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
17519   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
17520   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
17521   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
17522   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
17523   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
17524   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
17525 </ul></li>
17526 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
17527     Enabled for:
17528 <ul>
17529   <li>PAM
17530   <li>LDAP
17531   <li>IMAP
17532   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
17533 </ul>
17534 </li>
17535 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
17536 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
17537     fetched from LDAP.</li>
17538 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
17539 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
17540 </ul>
17541 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
17542
17543 <ul>
17544 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
17545     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
17546     for testing.</li>
17547 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
17548     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
17549     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
17550 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
17551 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
17552 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
17553 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
17554     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
17555 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
17556     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
17557     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
17558 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
17559     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
17560     and help out with translations.</li>
17561 </ul>
17562
17563 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
17564
17565 <ul>
17566 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
17567 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
17568 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
17569 </ul>
17570 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
17571
17572 <ul>
17573 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
17574 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
17575 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
17576 </ul>
17577
17578 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
17579 get closer to the final release.</p>
17580
17581 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
17582
17583 <ul>
17584 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
17585 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
17586 </ul>
17587
17588 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
17589 <ul>
17590 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
17591 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
17592 </ul>
17593 <p>How to report bugs:
17594 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
17595
17596 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
17597 </blockquote>
17598
17599       </div>
17600       <div class="tags">
17601
17602
17603         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17604
17605
17606       </div>
17607     </div>
17608     <div class="padding"></div>
17609
17610     <div class="entry">
17611       <div class="title">
17612         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
17613       </div>
17614       <div class="date">
17615         25th July 2010
17616       </div>
17617       <div class="body">
17618         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
17619 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
17620 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
17621 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
17622 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
17623
17624 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
17625 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
17626 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
17627 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
17628 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
17629 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
17630 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
17631
17632 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
17633 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
17634 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
17635 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
17636 up. :)</p>
17637
17638 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
17639 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
17640 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
17641
17642 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
17643 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
17644 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
17645 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
17646 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
17647 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
17648 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
17649 release another day.</p>
17650
17651 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
17652 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17653
17654       </div>
17655       <div class="tags">
17656
17657
17658         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17659
17660
17661       </div>
17662     </div>
17663     <div class="padding"></div>
17664
17665     <div class="entry">
17666       <div class="title">
17667         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
17668       </div>
17669       <div class="date">
17670         18th July 2010
17671       </div>
17672       <div class="body">
17673         <p>Thanks to
17674 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
17675 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
17676 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
17677 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
17678 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
17679 only available from the development server, until more experience is
17680 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
17681
17682 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
17683 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
17684 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
17685 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
17686 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
17687 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
17688 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
17689
17690       </div>
17691       <div class="tags">
17692
17693
17694         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17695
17696
17697       </div>
17698     </div>
17699     <div class="padding"></div>
17700
17701     <div class="entry">
17702       <div class="title">
17703         <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>
17704       </div>
17705       <div class="date">
17706         17th July 2010
17707       </div>
17708       <div class="body">
17709         <p>This is a
17710 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
17711 on my
17712 <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
17713 work</a> on
17714 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
17715 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
17716
17717 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
17718 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
17719 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
17720 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
17721
17722 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
17723 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
17724 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
17725
17726 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
17727
17728 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
17729 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
17730 the web.
17731
17732 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
17733 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
17734 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
17735 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
17736 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
17737 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
17738
17739 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
17740 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
17741 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
17742 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
17743 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
17744 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
17745 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
17746 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
17747 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
17748 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
17749 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
17750 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
17751 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
17752 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
17753 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
17754 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
17755
17756 <blockquote><pre>
17757 ldapsearch -h ldap \
17758   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
17759   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
17760   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
17761   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
17762   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
17763   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
17764
17765 ldapsearch -h ldap \
17766   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
17767   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
17768   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
17769   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
17770   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
17771 </pre></blockquote>
17772
17773 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
17774 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
17775 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
17776 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17777 also exist.</p>
17778
17779 <blockquote><pre>
17780 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17781 objectclass: top
17782 objectclass: dnsdomain
17783 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
17784 dc: tjener
17785 arecord: 10.0.2.2
17786 associateddomain: tjener.intern
17787
17788 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17789 objectclass: top
17790 objectclass: dnsdomain2
17791 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
17792 dc: 2
17793 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
17794 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
17795 </pre></blockquote>
17796
17797 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
17798 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
17799 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
17800 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
17801 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
17802 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
17803 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
17804 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
17805 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
17806 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
17807 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
17808 instead.</p>
17809
17810 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
17811 like this:</p>
17812
17813 <blockquote><pre>
17814 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
17815   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
17816   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
17817   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
17818   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
17819   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
17820
17821 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
17822   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
17823 </pre></blockquote>
17824
17825 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
17826 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
17827 reverse lookups.</p>
17828
17829 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
17830 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
17831 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
17832 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
17833
17834 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
17835 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
17836 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
17837
17838 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
17839 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
17840 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
17841 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
17842 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
17843
17844 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
17845 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
17846 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
17847 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
17848 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
17849
17850 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
17851 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
17852 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
17853 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
17854 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
17855 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
17856
17857 <blockquote><pre>
17858 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
17859     SUP top
17860     AUXILIARY
17861     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
17862           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
17863           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
17864           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
17865           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
17866     ))
17867 </pre></blockquote>
17868
17869 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
17870 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
17871 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
17872 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
17873 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
17874 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
17875
17876 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
17877
17878 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
17879 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
17880 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
17881 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
17882 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
17883
17884 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
17885 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
17886 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
17887 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
17888
17889 <blockquote><pre>
17890 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
17891 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
17892 </pre></blockquote>
17893
17894 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
17895 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
17896 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
17897 search result is this entry:</p>
17898
17899 <blockquote><pre>
17900 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17901 cn: dhcp
17902 objectClass: top
17903 objectClass: dhcpServer
17904 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17905 </pre></blockquote>
17906
17907 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
17908 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
17909 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
17910 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
17911 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
17912 The search result is this entry:</p>
17913
17914 <blockquote><pre>
17915 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17916 cn: DHCP Config
17917 objectClass: top
17918 objectClass: dhcpService
17919 objectClass: dhcpOptions
17920 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17921 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
17922 dhcpStatements: authoritative
17923 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
17924 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
17925 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
17926 </pre></blockquote>
17927
17928 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
17929 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
17930 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
17931 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
17932 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
17933 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
17934 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
17935 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
17936 related computer objects.</p>
17937
17938 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
17939 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
17940 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
17941 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
17942 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
17943 like:</p>
17944
17945 <blockquote><pre>
17946 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17947 cn: hostname
17948 objectClass: top
17949 objectClass: dhcpHost
17950 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
17951 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
17952 </pre></blockquote>
17953
17954 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
17955 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
17956 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
17957 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
17958 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
17959 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
17960 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
17961 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
17962 structural object class.
17963
17964 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17965
17966 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
17967 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
17968 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
17969 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
17970 in the configuration.</p>
17971
17972 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
17973 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
17974 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
17975 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
17976 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
17977 structure.</p>
17978
17979 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
17980 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
17981
17982 <blockquote><pre>
17983 ou=services
17984   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
17985     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
17986     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
17987       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
17988         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
17989     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
17990       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
17991         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
17992     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
17993       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
17994 </pre></blockquote>
17995
17996 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
17997 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
17998 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
17999 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
18000
18001 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
18002 like this:</p>
18003
18004 <blockquote><pre>
18005 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18006 dc: hostname
18007 objectClass: top
18008 objectClass: dhcpHost
18009 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18010 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
18011 associateddomain: hostname.intern
18012 arecord: 10.11.12.13
18013 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18014 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
18015 </pre></blockquote>
18016
18017 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
18018 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
18019 auxiliary object class.</p>
18020
18021       </div>
18022       <div class="tags">
18023
18024
18025         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>.
18026
18027
18028       </div>
18029     </div>
18030     <div class="padding"></div>
18031
18032     <div class="entry">
18033       <div class="title">
18034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
18035       </div>
18036       <div class="date">
18037         14th July 2010
18038       </div>
18039       <div class="body">
18040         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
18041 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
18042 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
18043 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
18044 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
18045
18046 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
18047 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
18048
18049 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
18050 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
18051 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
18052 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
18053 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
18054 to a slave DNS server.</p>
18055
18056 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
18057 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
18058 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
18059 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
18060 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
18061 seem to work.</p>
18062
18063 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
18064 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
18065 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
18066 this:</p>
18067
18068 <blockquote><pre>
18069   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18070   cn: hostname
18071   objectClass: dhcphost
18072   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18073   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
18074   associateddomain: hostname.intern
18075   arecord: 10.11.12.13
18076   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18077   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
18078   ldapconfigsound: Y
18079 </pre></blockquote>
18080
18081 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
18082 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
18083 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
18084 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
18085
18086 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
18087 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
18088 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
18089 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
18090 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
18091 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
18092 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
18093 might be a good place to put it.</p>
18094
18095 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18096 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18097
18098       </div>
18099       <div class="tags">
18100
18101
18102         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>.
18103
18104
18105       </div>
18106     </div>
18107     <div class="padding"></div>
18108
18109     <div class="entry">
18110       <div class="title">
18111         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
18112       </div>
18113       <div class="date">
18114         11th July 2010
18115       </div>
18116       <div class="body">
18117         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
18118 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
18119 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
18120 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
18121
18122 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
18123 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
18124 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
18125 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
18126 LTSP clients.</p>
18127
18128 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
18129 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
18130 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
18131
18132 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
18133 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
18134 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
18135
18136 <blockquote><pre>
18137 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
18138 #
18139 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
18140 #
18141 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
18142 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
18143 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
18144 #
18145 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
18146 # existence of attribute names.
18147 #
18148 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
18149 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
18150 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
18151 #
18152 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
18153 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
18154 #
18155 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
18156 #     SUP top
18157 #     AUXILIARY
18158 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
18159
18160 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
18161 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
18162     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
18163     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
18164         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
18165         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
18166             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
18167             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
18168             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
18169             # bass value on to clients
18170             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
18171         done
18172     done
18173 fi
18174 </pre></blockquote>
18175
18176 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
18177 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
18178 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
18179 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
18180 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
18181
18182 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18183 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18184
18185 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
18186 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
18187 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
18188 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
18189 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
18190 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
18191
18192       </div>
18193       <div class="tags">
18194
18195
18196         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>.
18197
18198
18199       </div>
18200     </div>
18201     <div class="padding"></div>
18202
18203     <div class="entry">
18204       <div class="title">
18205         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
18206       </div>
18207       <div class="date">
18208          9th July 2010
18209       </div>
18210       <div class="body">
18211         <p>Since
18212 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
18213 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
18214 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
18215 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
18216 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
18217 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
18218 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
18219 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
18220 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
18221 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
18222 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
18223 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
18224 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
18225
18226       </div>
18227       <div class="tags">
18228
18229
18230         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>.
18231
18232
18233       </div>
18234     </div>
18235     <div class="padding"></div>
18236
18237     <div class="entry">
18238       <div class="title">
18239         <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>
18240       </div>
18241       <div class="date">
18242          3rd July 2010
18243       </div>
18244       <div class="body">
18245         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
18246 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
18247 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
18248 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
18249 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
18250 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
18251 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
18252 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
18253
18254 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
18255 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
18256 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
18257 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
18258 publish the difference.</p>
18259
18260 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18261
18262 <blockquote><p>
18263   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18264   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
18265   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
18266   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
18267   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
18268   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
18269   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
18270   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
18271 </p></blockquote>
18272
18273 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18274
18275 <blockquote><p>
18276   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
18277   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
18278   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
18279   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
18280   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
18281   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
18282   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
18283   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
18284   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18285   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
18286   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
18287   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
18288   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
18289   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
18290   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
18291   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
18292   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
18293   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
18294   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
18295   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
18296 </p></blockquote>
18297
18298 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18299
18300 <blockquote><p>
18301   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
18302   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
18303   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
18304   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
18305   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
18306   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
18307   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
18308   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
18309   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
18310   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
18311   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
18312   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
18313   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
18314   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
18315   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
18316   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
18317   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
18318   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
18319   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
18320   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
18321   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
18322 </p></blockquote>
18323
18324 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18325
18326 <blockquote><p>
18327   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
18328   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
18329   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
18330 </p></blockquote>
18331
18332 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
18333 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
18334 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
18335 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
18336 the difference somewhat.
18337
18338       </div>
18339       <div class="tags">
18340
18341
18342         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>.
18343
18344
18345       </div>
18346     </div>
18347     <div class="padding"></div>
18348
18349     <div class="entry">
18350       <div class="title">
18351         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
18352       </div>
18353       <div class="date">
18354          1st July 2010
18355       </div>
18356       <div class="body">
18357         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
18358 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
18359 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
18360 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
18361 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
18362 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
18363 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
18364 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
18365 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
18366
18367 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
18368
18369 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
18370 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
18371 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
18372 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
18373 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
18374 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
18375 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
18376 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
18377 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
18378 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
18379 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
18380 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
18381 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
18382 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
18383 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
18384
18385 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
18386
18387 <blockquote><pre>
18388 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
18389 </pre></blockquote>
18390
18391 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
18392 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
18393 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
18394 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
18395 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
18396 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
18397 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
18398 on how to get this working.</p>
18399
18400 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
18401 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
18402 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
18403 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
18404 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
18405 instructions I found in the
18406 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
18407 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
18408
18409 <blockquote><pre>
18410         debug-level             0
18411         reload-count            unlimited
18412         paranoia                no
18413
18414         enable-cache            passwd          yes
18415         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
18416         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
18417         suggested-size          passwd          211
18418         check-files             passwd          yes
18419         persistent              passwd          yes
18420         shared                  passwd          yes
18421         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
18422         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
18423
18424         enable-cache            group           yes
18425         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
18426         negative-time-to-live   group           20
18427         suggested-size          group           211
18428         check-files             group           yes
18429         persistent              group           yes
18430         shared                  group           yes
18431         max-db-size             group           33554432
18432         auto-propagate          group           yes
18433
18434         enable-cache            hosts           no
18435         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
18436         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
18437         suggested-size          hosts           211
18438         check-files             hosts           yes
18439         persistent              hosts           yes
18440         shared                  hosts           yes
18441         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
18442
18443         enable-cache            services        yes
18444         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
18445         negative-time-to-live   services        20
18446         suggested-size          services        211
18447         check-files             services        yes
18448         persistent              services        yes
18449         shared                  services        yes
18450         max-db-size             services        33554432
18451 </pre></blockquote>
18452
18453 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
18454 automatically like the one provided in
18455 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
18456 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
18457 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
18458 look like this:</p>
18459
18460 <blockquote><pre>
18461 passwd:         files ldap
18462 group:          files ldap
18463 shadow:         files ldap
18464 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
18465 networks:       files
18466 protocols:      files
18467 services:       files
18468 ethers:         files
18469 rpc:            files
18470 netgroup:       files ldap
18471 </pre></blockquote>
18472
18473 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
18474 shadow and netgroup.</p>
18475
18476 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
18477 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
18478 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
18479 attributes cached.
18480
18481 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
18482   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
18483
18484 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
18485 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
18486 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
18487 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
18488 discovered sssd.</p>
18489
18490 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
18491
18492 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
18493 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
18494 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
18495 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
18496 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
18497 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
18498 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
18499 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
18500 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
18501 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
18502 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
18503 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
18504 version 1.2 is now in testing.
18505
18506 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
18507 roaming setup I want</p>
18508
18509 <blockquote><pre>
18510 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
18511 </pre></blockquote>
18512
18513 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
18514 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
18515
18516 <blockquote><pre>
18517 [sssd]
18518 config_file_version = 2
18519 reconnection_retries = 3
18520 sbus_timeout = 30
18521 services = nss, pam
18522 domains = INTERN
18523
18524 [nss]
18525 filter_groups = root
18526 filter_users = root
18527 reconnection_retries = 3
18528
18529 [pam]
18530 reconnection_retries = 3
18531
18532 [domain/INTERN]
18533 enumerate = false
18534 cache_credentials = true
18535
18536 id_provider = ldap
18537 auth_provider = ldap
18538 chpass_provider = ldap
18539
18540 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
18541 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18542 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
18543 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
18544 </pre></blockquote>
18545
18546 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
18547 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
18548
18549 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
18550 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
18551 modify it manually.</p>
18552
18553 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18554 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18555
18556       </div>
18557       <div class="tags">
18558
18559
18560         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18561
18562
18563       </div>
18564     </div>
18565     <div class="padding"></div>
18566
18567     <div class="entry">
18568       <div class="title">
18569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
18570       </div>
18571       <div class="date">
18572         28th June 2010
18573       </div>
18574       <div class="body">
18575         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
18576 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
18577 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
18578 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
18579 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
18580 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
18581 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
18582 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
18583 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
18584 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
18585
18586 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
18587 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
18588 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
18589 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
18590 released.</p>
18591
18592 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
18593 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
18594 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
18595 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
18596
18597 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
18598 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18599
18600 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
18601 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
18602 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
18603 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
18604 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
18605
18606       </div>
18607       <div class="tags">
18608
18609
18610         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>.
18611
18612
18613       </div>
18614     </div>
18615     <div class="padding"></div>
18616
18617     <div class="entry">
18618       <div class="title">
18619         <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>
18620       </div>
18621       <div class="date">
18622         24th June 2010
18623       </div>
18624       <div class="body">
18625         <p>A while back, I
18626 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
18627 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
18628 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
18629 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
18630
18631 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
18632 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
18633 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
18634 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
18635
18636 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
18637 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
18638 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
18639 Debian Edu.</p>
18640
18641 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
18642 the
18643 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
18644 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
18645 available today from IETF.</p>
18646
18647 <pre>
18648 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
18649 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
18650 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
18651  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
18652         NAME 'dhcpHost'
18653         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
18654 -       SUP top
18655 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
18656         MUST cn
18657         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
18658         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
18659 </pre>
18660
18661 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
18662 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
18663 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
18664
18665 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18666 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18667
18668       </div>
18669       <div class="tags">
18670
18671
18672         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>.
18673
18674
18675       </div>
18676     </div>
18677     <div class="padding"></div>
18678
18679     <div class="entry">
18680       <div class="title">
18681         <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>
18682       </div>
18683       <div class="date">
18684         16th June 2010
18685       </div>
18686       <div class="body">
18687         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
18688 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
18689 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
18690 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
18691 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
18692 this:
18693
18694 <blockquote><pre>
18695 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
18696 tasksel --new-install
18697 </pre></blockquote>
18698
18699 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
18700 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
18701 any output what so ever.
18702
18703 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
18704 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
18705 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
18706 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
18707 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
18708 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
18709 code like this:
18710
18711 <blockquote><pre>
18712 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
18713 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
18714 $cmd
18715 </pre></blockquote>
18716
18717 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
18718 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
18719 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
18720 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
18721 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
18722 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
18723 installation.</p>
18724
18725 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
18726 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
18727 like this.</p>
18728
18729       </div>
18730       <div class="tags">
18731
18732
18733         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>.
18734
18735
18736       </div>
18737     </div>
18738     <div class="padding"></div>
18739
18740     <div class="entry">
18741       <div class="title">
18742         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
18743       </div>
18744       <div class="date">
18745         13th June 2010
18746       </div>
18747       <div class="body">
18748         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
18749 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
18750 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
18751 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
18752 pages.</p>
18753
18754 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
18755 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
18756 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
18757 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
18758 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
18759 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
18760 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
18761 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
18762 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
18763 see how the project is doing.</p>
18764
18765 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
18766 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
18767 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
18768 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
18769 Windows.  This is great.</p>
18770
18771       </div>
18772       <div class="tags">
18773
18774
18775         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
18776
18777
18778       </div>
18779     </div>
18780     <div class="padding"></div>
18781
18782     <div class="entry">
18783       <div class="title">
18784         <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>
18785       </div>
18786       <div class="date">
18787         13th June 2010
18788       </div>
18789       <div class="body">
18790         <p>My
18791 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
18792 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
18793 finally made the upgrade logs available from
18794 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
18795 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
18796 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
18797 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
18798
18799 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
18800 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
18801 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
18802 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
18803 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
18804 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
18805 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
18806 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
18807
18808 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
18809 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
18810 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
18811 too surprising.</p>
18812
18813 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
18814 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
18815 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
18816 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
18817 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
18818 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
18819 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
18820 continue.</p>
18821
18822 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
18823 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
18824   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
18825   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
18826   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
18827   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
18828   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
18829   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
18830   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
18831   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
18832   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
18833   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
18834   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
18835   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
18836   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
18837   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18838   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
18839   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
18840   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
18841   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
18842   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
18843   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
18844   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
18845   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
18846   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
18847   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
18848   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
18849   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
18850   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
18851   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
18852
18853 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
18854
18855 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
18856   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
18857   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
18858   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
18859   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
18860   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
18861   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
18862   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
18863   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
18864   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
18865   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18866   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
18867   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
18868   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
18869   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
18870   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
18871   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
18872   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
18873   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
18874   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
18875   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
18876   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
18877   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
18878   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
18879   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
18880   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
18881   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
18882   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
18883   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
18884   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18885   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
18886   zip</p>
18887
18888 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
18889
18890 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
18891   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
18892   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
18893   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
18894   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
18895   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
18896   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
18897   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
18898   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
18899   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
18900   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
18901   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
18902   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
18903   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
18904   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18905   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
18906   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
18907   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
18908   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
18909   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
18910   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
18911   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
18912   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
18913   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
18914   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
18915   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
18916   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
18917   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
18918
18919 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
18920 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
18921   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
18922   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
18923   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
18924   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
18925   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
18926   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
18927   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
18928   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
18929   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
18930   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
18931   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
18932   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
18933   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
18934   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
18935   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
18936   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
18937   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
18938   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
18939   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
18940   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
18941   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
18942   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
18943   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
18944   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
18945   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
18946   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
18947   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
18948   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
18949   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
18950   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
18951   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
18952   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
18953   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
18954   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18955   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
18956   xulrunner-1.9</p>
18957
18958
18959       </div>
18960       <div class="tags">
18961
18962
18963         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>.
18964
18965
18966       </div>
18967     </div>
18968     <div class="padding"></div>
18969
18970     <div class="entry">
18971       <div class="title">
18972         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
18973       </div>
18974       <div class="date">
18975         11th June 2010
18976       </div>
18977       <div class="body">
18978         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
18979 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
18980 have been discovered and reported in the process
18981 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
18982 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
18983 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
18984 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
18985 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
18986
18987 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
18988 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
18989 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
18990 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
18991 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
18992 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
18993
18994 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
18995 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
18996 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
18997 is created.  The bug report
18998 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
18999 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
19000 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
19001 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
19002 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
19003 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
19004 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
19005 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
19006 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
19007 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
19008 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
19009 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
19010 Debian Squeeze.</p>
19011
19012 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
19013 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
19014 trick:</p>
19015
19016 <blockquote><pre>
19017 #!/bin/sh
19018 set -ex
19019
19020 if [ "$1" ] ; then
19021     desktop=$1
19022 else
19023     desktop=gnome
19024 fi
19025
19026 from=lenny
19027 to=squeeze
19028
19029 exec &lt; /dev/null
19030 unset LANG
19031 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
19032 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
19033 fuser -mv .
19034 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
19035 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
19036 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
19037 #!/bin/sh
19038 exit 101
19039 EOF
19040 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
19041 exit_cleanup() {
19042     umount $tmpdir/proc
19043 }
19044 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
19045 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
19046 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
19047
19048 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
19049
19050 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
19051 # to return the correct answers.
19052 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
19053     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
19054
19055 # Include the desktop and laptop task
19056 for test in desktop laptop ; do
19057     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
19058 #!/bin/sh
19059 exit 2
19060 EOF
19061     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
19062 done
19063
19064 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19065 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
19066 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
19067 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
19068
19069 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
19070 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
19071 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
19072 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
19073 fuser -mv
19074 </pre></blockquote>
19075
19076 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
19077 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
19078 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
19079 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
19080 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
19081 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
19082
19083 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
19084 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
19085 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
19086 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
19087 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
19088 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
19089 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
19090
19091 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
19092 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
19093 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
19094 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
19095 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
19096 packages.</p>
19097
19098       </div>
19099       <div class="tags">
19100
19101
19102         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>.
19103
19104
19105       </div>
19106     </div>
19107     <div class="padding"></div>
19108
19109     <div class="entry">
19110       <div class="title">
19111         <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>
19112       </div>
19113       <div class="date">
19114          6th June 2010
19115       </div>
19116       <div class="body">
19117         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
19118 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
19119 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
19120 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
19121 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
19122 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
19123 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
19124
19125 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
19126 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
19127 COLUMNS):</p>
19128
19129 <blockquote><pre>
19130 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
19131 previous=N
19132 PREVLEVEL=
19133 RUNLEVEL=
19134 runlevel=S
19135 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
19136 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
19137 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
19138 </pre></blockquote>
19139
19140 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
19141 script.</p>
19142
19143 <blockquote><pre>
19144 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
19145 previous=N
19146 PREVLEVEL=N
19147 RUNLEVEL=S
19148 runlevel=S
19149 </pre></blockquote>
19150
19151 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
19152 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
19153 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
19154
19155 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
19156 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
19157 choice.</p>
19158
19159       </div>
19160       <div class="tags">
19161
19162
19163         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>.
19164
19165
19166       </div>
19167     </div>
19168     <div class="padding"></div>
19169
19170     <div class="entry">
19171       <div class="title">
19172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
19173       </div>
19174       <div class="date">
19175          6th June 2010
19176       </div>
19177       <div class="body">
19178         <p>Via the
19179 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
19180 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
19181 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
19182 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
19183 following the standards wars of today.</p>
19184
19185       </div>
19186       <div class="tags">
19187
19188
19189         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>.
19190
19191
19192       </div>
19193     </div>
19194     <div class="padding"></div>
19195
19196     <div class="entry">
19197       <div class="title">
19198         <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>
19199       </div>
19200       <div class="date">
19201          3rd June 2010
19202       </div>
19203       <div class="body">
19204         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
19205 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
19206 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
19207 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
19208 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
19209
19210 <blockquote><pre>
19211 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
19212   vendor                    count
19213   Dell Computer Corporation     1
19214     PowerEdge 1750              1
19215   IBM                           1
19216     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
19217   Intel                         2
19218   [no-dmi-info]                 3
19219 maintainer:~#
19220 </pre></blockquote>
19221
19222 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
19223 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
19224 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
19225 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
19226 option to list the individual machines.</p>
19227
19228 <p>A larger list is
19229 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
19230 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
19231 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
19232 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
19233 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
19234 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
19235 collector.</p>
19236
19237       </div>
19238       <div class="tags">
19239
19240
19241         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>.
19242
19243
19244       </div>
19245     </div>
19246     <div class="padding"></div>
19247
19248     <div class="entry">
19249       <div class="title">
19250         <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>
19251       </div>
19252       <div class="date">
19253          1st June 2010
19254       </div>
19255       <div class="body">
19256         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
19257 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
19258 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
19259 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
19260 wait.</p>
19261
19262 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
19263 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
19264 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
19265 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
19266 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
19267 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
19268
19269 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
19270 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
19271 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
19272 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
19273 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
19274 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
19275 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
19276 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
19277
19278 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
19279
19280       </div>
19281       <div class="tags">
19282
19283
19284         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>.
19285
19286
19287       </div>
19288     </div>
19289     <div class="padding"></div>
19290
19291     <div class="entry">
19292       <div class="title">
19293         <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>
19294       </div>
19295       <div class="date">
19296         27th May 2010
19297       </div>
19298       <div class="body">
19299         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
19300 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
19301 issues are known and should be solved:
19302
19303 <p><ul>
19304
19305 <li>The wicd package seen to
19306 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
19307 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
19308 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
19309 seem to be on the case.</li>
19310
19311 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
19312 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
19313 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
19314 maintainer is on the case.</li>
19315
19316 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
19317 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
19318 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
19319 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
19320 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
19321 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
19322 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
19323 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
19324
19325 </ul></p>
19326
19327 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
19328 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
19329 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
19330 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
19331
19332 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
19333 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
19334 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
19335 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
19336
19337 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
19338
19339       </div>
19340       <div class="tags">
19341
19342
19343         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>.
19344
19345
19346       </div>
19347     </div>
19348     <div class="padding"></div>
19349
19350     <div class="entry">
19351       <div class="title">
19352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
19353       </div>
19354       <div class="date">
19355         22nd May 2010
19356       </div>
19357       <div class="body">
19358         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
19359 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
19360 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
19361 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
19362
19363 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
19364 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
19365 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
19366 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
19367 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
19368 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
19369 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
19370 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
19371 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
19372 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
19373 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
19374 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
19375 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
19376 going to work.</p>
19377
19378 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
19379 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
19380 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
19381 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
19382 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
19383 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
19384 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
19385 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
19386 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
19387 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
19388 Edu.</p>
19389
19390 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
19391 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
19392 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
19393 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
19394 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
19395 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
19396
19397 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
19398 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
19399
19400       </div>
19401       <div class="tags">
19402
19403
19404         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>.
19405
19406
19407       </div>
19408     </div>
19409     <div class="padding"></div>
19410
19411     <div class="entry">
19412       <div class="title">
19413         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
19414       </div>
19415       <div class="date">
19416         19th May 2010
19417       </div>
19418       <div class="body">
19419         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
19420 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
19421 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
19422 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
19423 into unstable.  The
19424 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
19425 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
19426 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
19427 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
19428 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
19429 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
19430 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
19431
19432 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
19433 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
19434 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
19435 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
19436 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
19437 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
19438 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
19439 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
19440
19441 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
19442 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
19443 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
19444 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
19445 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
19446 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
19447 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
19448
19449 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
19450 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
19451 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
19452 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
19453 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
19454 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
19455 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
19456 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
19457 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
19458 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
19459 on the home directory servers.</p>
19460
19461 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
19462 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
19463 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
19464 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
19465 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
19466 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
19467
19468 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19469 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19470
19471       </div>
19472       <div class="tags">
19473
19474
19475         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19476
19477
19478       </div>
19479     </div>
19480     <div class="padding"></div>
19481
19482     <div class="entry">
19483       <div class="title">
19484         <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>
19485       </div>
19486       <div class="date">
19487         14th May 2010
19488       </div>
19489       <div class="body">
19490         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
19491 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
19492 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
19493 expected, if I am to believe the
19494 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
19495 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
19496 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
19497 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
19498 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
19499 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
19500 version.</p>
19501
19502 More information about
19503 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
19504 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
19505 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
19506 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
19507
19508 <blockquote><pre>
19509 CONCURRENCY=none
19510 </pre></blockquote>
19511
19512 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
19513 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
19514 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
19515 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
19516
19517       </div>
19518       <div class="tags">
19519
19520
19521         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>.
19522
19523
19524       </div>
19525     </div>
19526     <div class="padding"></div>
19527
19528     <div class="entry">
19529       <div class="title">
19530         <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>
19531       </div>
19532       <div class="date">
19533         14th May 2010
19534       </div>
19535       <div class="body">
19536         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
19537 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
19538 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
19539 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
19540 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
19541 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
19542 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
19543 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
19544
19545 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
19546 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
19547 this on the collector host:</p>
19548
19549 <blockquote><pre>
19550 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
19551 </pre></blockquote>
19552
19553 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
19554 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
19555
19556 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
19557 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
19558 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
19559 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
19560 written yet.</p>
19561
19562       </div>
19563       <div class="tags">
19564
19565
19566         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>.
19567
19568
19569       </div>
19570     </div>
19571     <div class="padding"></div>
19572
19573     <div class="entry">
19574       <div class="title">
19575         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
19576       </div>
19577       <div class="date">
19578         13th May 2010
19579       </div>
19580       <div class="body">
19581         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
19582 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
19583 has been
19584 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
19585
19586 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
19587 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
19588 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
19589 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
19590 based boot system.  Tollef is
19591 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
19592 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
19593 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
19594 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
19595 at the moment do not.</p>
19596
19597 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
19598 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
19599 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
19600 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
19601 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
19602 way forward.</p>
19603
19604 <p>In the mean time, based on the
19605 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
19606 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
19607 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
19608 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
19609 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
19610 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
19611 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
19612 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
19613
19614       </div>
19615       <div class="tags">
19616
19617
19618         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>.
19619
19620
19621       </div>
19622     </div>
19623     <div class="padding"></div>
19624
19625     <div class="entry">
19626       <div class="title">
19627         <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>
19628       </div>
19629       <div class="date">
19630          6th May 2010
19631       </div>
19632       <div class="body">
19633         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
19634 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
19635 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
19636 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
19637 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
19638 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
19639 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
19640
19641 <blockquote><pre>
19642 CONCURRENCY=makefile
19643 </pre></blockquote>
19644
19645 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
19646 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
19647 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
19648 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
19649 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
19650 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
19651 make this happen.</p>
19652
19653 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
19654 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
19655 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
19656 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
19657 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
19658
19659 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
19660 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
19661 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
19662 fix the remaining issues.</p>
19663
19664 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
19665 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
19666 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
19667 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
19668
19669       </div>
19670       <div class="tags">
19671
19672
19673         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>.
19674
19675
19676       </div>
19677     </div>
19678     <div class="padding"></div>
19679
19680     <div class="entry">
19681       <div class="title">
19682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
19683       </div>
19684       <div class="date">
19685          2nd May 2010
19686       </div>
19687       <div class="body">
19688         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
19689 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
19690 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
19691
19692 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
19693 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
19694 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
19695 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
19696 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
19697
19698 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
19699 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
19700
19701 <blockquote><pre>
19702 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
19703 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
19704 Password expires                                        : never
19705 Password inactive                                       : never
19706 Account expires                                         : never
19707 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
19708 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
19709 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
19710 root@tjener:~#
19711 </pre></blockquote>
19712
19713 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
19714 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
19715 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
19716 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
19717 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
19718 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
19719
19720 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
19721 intended:</p>
19722
19723 <blockquote><pre>
19724 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
19725 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
19726 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
19727 Password expires                                        : never
19728 Password inactive                                       : never
19729 Account expires                                         : never
19730 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
19731 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
19732 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
19733 root@tjener:~#
19734 </pre></blockquote>
19735
19736 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
19737 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
19738 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
19739
19740 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
19741 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
19742
19743 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
19744 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19745
19746 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
19747 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
19748 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
19749 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
19750 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
19751 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
19752 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
19753
19754 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
19755 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
19756 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
19757 change.</p>
19758
19759       </div>
19760       <div class="tags">
19761
19762
19763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
19764
19765
19766       </div>
19767     </div>
19768     <div class="padding"></div>
19769
19770     <div class="entry">
19771       <div class="title">
19772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
19773       </div>
19774       <div class="date">
19775         28th April 2010
19776       </div>
19777       <div class="body">
19778         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
19779 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
19780 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
19781 and go.</p>
19782
19783 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
19784 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
19785 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
19786 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
19787
19788 <ul>
19789
19790  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
19791    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
19792    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
19793    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
19794    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
19795    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
19796    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
19797    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
19798    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
19799    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
19800    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
19801    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
19802
19803  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
19804    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
19805    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
19806    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
19807    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
19808    or the Fedora developed
19809    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
19810    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
19811
19812  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
19813    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
19814    directory, using unison.</li>
19815
19816  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
19817    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
19818    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
19819    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
19820    implemented.</li>
19821
19822  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
19823    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
19824
19825  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
19826    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
19827    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
19828
19829 </ul>
19830
19831 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
19832 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
19833 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
19834 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
19835 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
19836 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
19837 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
19838 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
19839 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
19840
19841 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19842 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19843
19844       </div>
19845       <div class="tags">
19846
19847
19848         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19849
19850
19851       </div>
19852     </div>
19853     <div class="padding"></div>
19854
19855     <div class="entry">
19856       <div class="title">
19857         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
19858       </div>
19859       <div class="date">
19860         19th April 2010
19861       </div>
19862       <div class="body">
19863         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
19864 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
19865 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
19866 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
19867 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
19868 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
19869 restrictions on the web, for example from
19870 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
19871 epub-version from
19872 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
19873 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
19874 strongly recommend this book.</p>
19875
19876       </div>
19877       <div class="tags">
19878
19879
19880         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19881
19882
19883       </div>
19884     </div>
19885     <div class="padding"></div>
19886
19887     <div class="entry">
19888       <div class="title">
19889         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
19890       </div>
19891       <div class="date">
19892         14th April 2010
19893       </div>
19894       <div class="body">
19895         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
19896 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
19897 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
19898 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
19899 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
19900 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
19901 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
19902 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
19903 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
19904
19905 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
19906 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
19907 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
19908 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
19909 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
19910
19911 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
19912 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
19913
19914 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
19915 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
19916 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
19917 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
19918 to work properly.</p>
19919
19920 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
19921 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
19922 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
19923 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
19924 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
19925 time.</p>
19926
19927 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
19928 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
19929 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
19930 up in a few days.</p>
19931
19932       </div>
19933       <div class="tags">
19934
19935
19936         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19937
19938
19939       </div>
19940     </div>
19941     <div class="padding"></div>
19942
19943     <div class="entry">
19944       <div class="title">
19945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
19946       </div>
19947       <div class="date">
19948          6th March 2010
19949       </div>
19950       <div class="body">
19951         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
19952 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
19953 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
19954 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
19955 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
19956 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
19957
19958 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
19959 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
19960 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
19961 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
19962
19963 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
19964 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
19965 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
19966 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
19967 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
19968 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
19969
19970       </div>
19971       <div class="tags">
19972
19973
19974         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19975
19976
19977       </div>
19978     </div>
19979     <div class="padding"></div>
19980
19981     <div class="entry">
19982       <div class="title">
19983         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
19984       </div>
19985       <div class="date">
19986         11th February 2010
19987       </div>
19988       <div class="body">
19989         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
19990 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
19991 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
19992 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
19993 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
19994 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
19995 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
19996
19997 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
19998
19999 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
20000 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
20001 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
20002 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
20003
20004       </div>
20005       <div class="tags">
20006
20007
20008         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20009
20010
20011       </div>
20012     </div>
20013     <div class="padding"></div>
20014
20015     <div class="entry">
20016       <div class="title">
20017         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
20018       </div>
20019       <div class="date">
20020         27th January 2010
20021       </div>
20022       <div class="body">
20023         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
20024 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
20025 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
20026 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
20027 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
20028 further.</p>
20029
20030 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
20031 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
20032 configured to be a server for the
20033 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
20034 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
20035 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
20036 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
20037 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
20038 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
20039 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
20040 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
20041 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
20042 and Nagios configuration.</p>
20043
20044 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
20045 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
20046 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
20047 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
20048
20049 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
20050 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
20051 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
20052 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
20053 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
20054 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
20055 the machine.</p>
20056
20057 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
20058 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
20059 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
20060 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
20061
20062 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
20063 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
20064 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
20065 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
20066 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
20067 everything is taken care of.</p>
20068
20069       </div>
20070       <div class="tags">
20071
20072
20073         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
20074
20075
20076       </div>
20077     </div>
20078     <div class="padding"></div>
20079
20080     <div class="entry">
20081       <div class="title">
20082         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
20083       </div>
20084       <div class="date">
20085         12th August 2009
20086       </div>
20087       <div class="body">
20088         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
20089 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
20090 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
20091 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
20092
20093 <table>
20094 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20095 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
20096 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
20097 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
20098 </table>
20099
20100 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
20101 got these numbers:</p>
20102
20103 <table>
20104 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20105 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
20106 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
20107 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
20108 </table>
20109
20110 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
20111
20112 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
20113 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
20114 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
20115 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
20116 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
20117
20118
20119 <table>
20120 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20121 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
20122 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
20123 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
20124 </table>
20125
20126 <p>And with 'site:no':
20127
20128 <table>
20129 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20130 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
20131 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
20132 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
20133 </table>
20134
20135 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
20136 numbers.</p>
20137
20138       </div>
20139       <div class="tags">
20140
20141
20142         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
20143
20144
20145       </div>
20146     </div>
20147     <div class="padding"></div>
20148
20149     <div class="entry">
20150       <div class="title">
20151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
20152       </div>
20153       <div class="date">
20154          8th August 2009
20155       </div>
20156       <div class="body">
20157         <p>According to <a
20158 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
20159 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
20160 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
20161 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
20162 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
20163 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
20164 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
20165 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
20166 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
20167 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
20168
20169 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
20170 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
20171 seminar this autumn.</p>
20172
20173       </div>
20174       <div class="tags">
20175
20176
20177         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
20178
20179
20180       </div>
20181     </div>
20182     <div class="padding"></div>
20183
20184     <div class="entry">
20185       <div class="title">
20186         <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>
20187       </div>
20188       <div class="date">
20189         27th July 2009
20190       </div>
20191       <div class="body">
20192         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
20193 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
20194 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
20195 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
20196 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
20197 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
20198 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
20199
20200 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
20201 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
20202 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
20203
20204       </div>
20205       <div class="tags">
20206
20207
20208         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>.
20209
20210
20211       </div>
20212     </div>
20213     <div class="padding"></div>
20214
20215     <div class="entry">
20216       <div class="title">
20217         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
20218       </div>
20219       <div class="date">
20220         22nd July 2009
20221       </div>
20222       <div class="body">
20223         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
20224 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
20225 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
20226 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
20227 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
20228 the package up to date.</p>
20229
20230 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
20231 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
20232 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
20233 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
20234 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
20235 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
20236 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
20237 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
20238 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
20239 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
20240 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
20241 working on the future release.</p>
20242
20243 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
20244 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
20245
20246       </div>
20247       <div class="tags">
20248
20249
20250         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>.
20251
20252
20253       </div>
20254     </div>
20255     <div class="padding"></div>
20256
20257     <div class="entry">
20258       <div class="title">
20259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
20260       </div>
20261       <div class="date">
20262         24th June 2009
20263       </div>
20264       <div class="body">
20265         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
20266 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
20267 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
20268 funded
20269 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
20270 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
20271 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
20272 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
20273 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
20274 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
20275
20276 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
20277 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
20278 boot:</p>
20279
20280 <ul>
20281
20282 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
20283
20284 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
20285    clock is in UTC.</li>
20286
20287 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
20288    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20289    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
20290
20291 </ul>
20292
20293 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
20294 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
20295 Villegas</a>.
20296
20297 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
20298 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
20299 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
20300 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
20301 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
20302 using this.</p>
20303
20304 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
20305 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
20306 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
20307 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
20308 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
20309 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
20310 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
20311
20312       </div>
20313       <div class="tags">
20314
20315
20316         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>.
20317
20318
20319       </div>
20320     </div>
20321     <div class="padding"></div>
20322
20323     <div class="entry">
20324       <div class="title">
20325         <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>
20326       </div>
20327       <div class="date">
20328          2nd May 2009
20329       </div>
20330       <div class="body">
20331         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
20332 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
20333 do not yet know them.</p>
20334
20335 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
20336 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
20337 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
20338 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
20339 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
20340 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
20341 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
20342 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
20343 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
20344 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
20345 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
20346
20347 <p>The second one is
20348 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
20349 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
20350 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
20351 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
20352 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
20353 and the company behind it is running
20354 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
20355 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
20356 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
20357 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
20358 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
20359 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
20360 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
20361 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
20362
20363 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
20364 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
20365 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
20366 surrounded by today.</p>
20367
20368       </div>
20369       <div class="tags">
20370
20371
20372         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>.
20373
20374
20375       </div>
20376     </div>
20377     <div class="padding"></div>
20378
20379     <div class="entry">
20380       <div class="title">
20381         <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>
20382       </div>
20383       <div class="date">
20384         28th April 2009
20385       </div>
20386       <div class="body">
20387         <p>Julien Blache
20388 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
20389 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
20390 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
20391 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
20392 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
20393 properties.</p>
20394
20395       </div>
20396       <div class="tags">
20397
20398
20399         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>.
20400
20401
20402       </div>
20403     </div>
20404     <div class="padding"></div>
20405
20406     <div class="entry">
20407       <div class="title">
20408         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
20409       </div>
20410       <div class="date">
20411          5th April 2009
20412       </div>
20413       <div class="body">
20414         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
20415 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
20416 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
20417 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
20418 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
20419 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
20420 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
20421 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
20422
20423 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
20424 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
20425 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
20426   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
20427   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
20428
20429 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
20430 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
20431 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
20432 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
20433
20434 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
20435 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
20436 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
20437 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
20438
20439 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
20440 set -e
20441 URL="$1"
20442 SAVEFILE="$2"
20443 DURATION="$3"
20444 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
20445   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
20446   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
20447 pid=$!
20448 sleep $DURATION
20449 kill $pid
20450 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
20451
20452       </div>
20453       <div class="tags">
20454
20455
20456         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20457
20458
20459       </div>
20460     </div>
20461     <div class="padding"></div>
20462
20463     <div class="entry">
20464       <div class="title">
20465         <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>
20466       </div>
20467       <div class="date">
20468         30th March 2009
20469       </div>
20470       <div class="body">
20471         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
20472 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
20473 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
20474 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
20475 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
20476 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
20477 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
20478 application.</p>
20479
20480 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
20481 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
20482 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
20483 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
20484 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
20485 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
20486 blocked from doing so.</p>
20487
20488 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
20489 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
20490 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
20491 requirements change.</p>
20492
20493 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
20494 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
20495 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
20496
20497       </div>
20498       <div class="tags">
20499
20500
20501         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>.
20502
20503
20504       </div>
20505     </div>
20506     <div class="padding"></div>
20507
20508     <div class="entry">
20509       <div class="title">
20510         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
20511       </div>
20512       <div class="date">
20513         29th March 2009
20514       </div>
20515       <div class="body">
20516         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
20517 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
20518 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
20519 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
20520 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
20521 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
20522 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
20523 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
20524 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
20525 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
20526 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
20527 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
20528 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
20529 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
20530 now. :)</p>
20531
20532       </div>
20533       <div class="tags">
20534
20535
20536         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>.
20537
20538
20539       </div>
20540     </div>
20541     <div class="padding"></div>
20542
20543     <div class="entry">
20544       <div class="title">
20545         <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>
20546       </div>
20547       <div class="date">
20548         29th March 2009
20549       </div>
20550       <div class="body">
20551         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
20552 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
20553 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
20554 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
20555 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
20556 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
20557
20558 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
20559 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
20560 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
20561 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
20562 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
20563 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
20564 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
20565 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
20566 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
20567 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
20568 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
20569 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
20570 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
20571
20572 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
20573 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
20574 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
20575 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
20576
20577 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
20578 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
20579
20580 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
20581 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
20582 new IETF work group?</p>
20583
20584       </div>
20585       <div class="tags">
20586
20587
20588         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>.
20589
20590
20591       </div>
20592     </div>
20593     <div class="padding"></div>
20594
20595     <div class="entry">
20596       <div class="title">
20597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
20598       </div>
20599       <div class="date">
20600         28th February 2009
20601       </div>
20602       <div class="body">
20603         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
20604 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
20605 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
20606 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
20607 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
20608 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
20609 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
20610 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
20611 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
20612 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
20613 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
20614 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
20615 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
20616 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
20617 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
20618 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
20619 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
20620 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
20621 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
20622 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
20623 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
20624 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
20625 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
20626 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
20627 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
20628 machine.</p>
20629
20630 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
20631 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
20632 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
20633 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
20634 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
20635 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
20636 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
20637
20638 <pre>
20639 use LWP::Simple;
20640 use POSIX;
20641 use WWW::Mechanize;
20642 use Date::Parse;
20643 [...]
20644 sub get_support_info {
20645     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
20646     my $str;
20647
20648     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
20649         # fetch website from Dell support
20650         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
20651         my $webpage = get($url);
20652         return undef unless ($webpage);
20653
20654         my $daysleft = -1;
20655         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
20656         foreach my $line (@lines) {
20657             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
20658             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
20659             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
20660
20661             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
20662             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
20663             my $lastend = "";
20664             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
20665                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
20666
20667                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
20668                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
20669                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
20670                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
20671                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
20672                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
20673                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
20674             }
20675             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
20676             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
20677                 if ($lastend lt $today);
20678         }
20679     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
20680         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
20681         my $url =
20682             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
20683         $mech->get($url);
20684         my $fields = {
20685             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
20686             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
20687             'country' => 'NO',
20688             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
20689             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
20690         };
20691         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
20692                             fields      => $fields );
20693         # Next step is screen scraping
20694         my $content = $mech->content();
20695
20696         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
20697         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
20698         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
20699         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
20700
20701         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
20702
20703         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
20704             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
20705                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
20706             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
20707             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
20708                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
20709             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
20710                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
20711
20712             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
20713
20714             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
20715                 if ($end lt $today);
20716         }
20717     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
20718         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
20719         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
20720         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
20721             my $content =
20722                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
20723             if ($content) {
20724                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
20725                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
20726                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
20727                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
20728
20729                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
20730                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
20731
20732                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
20733
20734                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
20735                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
20736                     if ($end lt $today);
20737             }
20738         }
20739     }
20740     return $str;
20741 }
20742 </pre>
20743
20744 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
20745 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
20746 from dmidecode.</p>
20747
20748 <pre>
20749 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
20750                        "447707-B21");
20751 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
20752 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
20753                        "1234567");
20754 </pre>
20755
20756 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
20757 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
20758
20759 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
20760 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
20761 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
20762 do so.</p>
20763
20764       </div>
20765       <div class="tags">
20766
20767
20768         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20769
20770
20771       </div>
20772     </div>
20773     <div class="padding"></div>
20774
20775     <div class="entry">
20776       <div class="title">
20777         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
20778       </div>
20779       <div class="date">
20780         20th February 2009
20781       </div>
20782       <div class="body">
20783         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
20784 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
20785 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
20786 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
20787 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
20788 the "missing" computer.</p>
20789
20790 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
20791 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
20792 code blocks as defined in the
20793 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
20794 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
20795 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
20796 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
20797 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
20798 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
20799 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
20800 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
20801 codes.</p>
20802
20803 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
20804 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
20805 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
20806 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
20807 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
20808 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
20809
20810 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
20811 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
20812 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
20813 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
20814 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
20815 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
20816 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
20817 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
20818 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
20819 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
20820
20821 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
20822 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
20823 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
20824
20825       </div>
20826       <div class="tags">
20827
20828
20829         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20830
20831
20832       </div>
20833     </div>
20834     <div class="padding"></div>
20835
20836     <div class="entry">
20837       <div class="title">
20838         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
20839       </div>
20840       <div class="date">
20841         17th January 2009
20842       </div>
20843       <div class="body">
20844         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
20845 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
20846 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
20847 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
20848 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
20849 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
20850 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
20851 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
20852 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
20853 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
20854 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
20855 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
20856 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
20857 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
20858
20859 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
20860 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
20861 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
20862 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
20863 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
20864 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
20865 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
20866 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
20867 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
20868 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
20869 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
20870 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
20871 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
20872 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
20873 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
20874 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
20875 playing when the download is done.</p>
20876
20877 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
20878 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
20879 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
20880 too.</p>
20881
20882 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
20883 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
20884 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
20885 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
20886
20887       </div>
20888       <div class="tags">
20889
20890
20891         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
20892
20893
20894       </div>
20895     </div>
20896     <div class="padding"></div>
20897
20898     <div class="entry">
20899       <div class="title">
20900         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
20901       </div>
20902       <div class="date">
20903         28th December 2008
20904       </div>
20905       <div class="body">
20906         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
20907 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
20908 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
20909 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
20910 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
20911 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
20912 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
20913 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
20914 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
20915 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
20916 source, sink and mixer applications and
20917 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
20918 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
20919 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
20920 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
20921 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
20922 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
20923 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
20924 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
20925 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
20926
20927 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
20928 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
20929 larger stick as well.</p>
20930
20931       </div>
20932       <div class="tags">
20933
20934
20935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20936
20937
20938       </div>
20939     </div>
20940     <div class="padding"></div>
20941
20942     <div class="entry">
20943       <div class="title">
20944         <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>
20945       </div>
20946       <div class="date">
20947          7th December 2008
20948       </div>
20949       <div class="body">
20950         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
20951 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
20952 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
20953 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
20954 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
20955 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
20956 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
20957 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
20958
20959 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
20960 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
20961 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
20962 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
20963 of these cards.</p>
20964
20965       </div>
20966       <div class="tags">
20967
20968
20969         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>.
20970
20971
20972       </div>
20973     </div>
20974     <div class="padding"></div>
20975
20976     <div class="entry">
20977       <div class="title">
20978         <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>
20979       </div>
20980       <div class="date">
20981         25th November 2008
20982       </div>
20983       <div class="body">
20984         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
20985 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
20986 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
20987 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
20988 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
20989 notes are available on
20990 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
20991 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
20992 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
20993 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
20994 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
20995 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
20996 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
20997 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
20998 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
20999
21000 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
21001 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
21002
21003       </div>
21004       <div class="tags">
21005
21006
21007         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>.
21008
21009
21010       </div>
21011     </div>
21012     <div class="padding"></div>
21013
21014     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
21015     <div id="sidebar">
21016
21017
21018
21019 <h2>Archive</h2>
21020 <ul>
21021
21022 <li>2014
21023 <ul>
21024
21025 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
21026
21027 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
21028
21029 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
21030
21031 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
21032
21033 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
21034
21035 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
21036
21037 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
21038
21039 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
21040
21041 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
21042
21043 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (3)</a></li>
21044
21045 </ul></li>
21046
21047 <li>2013
21048 <ul>
21049
21050 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
21051
21052 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
21053
21054 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
21055
21056 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
21057
21058 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
21059
21060 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
21061
21062 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
21063
21064 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
21065
21066 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
21067
21068 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
21069
21070 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
21071
21072 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
21073
21074 </ul></li>
21075
21076 <li>2012
21077 <ul>
21078
21079 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
21080
21081 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
21082
21083 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
21084
21085 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
21086
21087 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
21088
21089 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
21090
21091 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
21092
21093 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
21094
21095 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
21096
21097 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
21098
21099 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
21100
21101 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
21102
21103 </ul></li>
21104
21105 <li>2011
21106 <ul>
21107
21108 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
21109
21110 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
21111
21112 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
21113
21114 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
21115
21116 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
21117
21118 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
21119
21120 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
21121
21122 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
21123
21124 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
21125
21126 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
21127
21128 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
21129
21130 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
21131
21132 </ul></li>
21133
21134 <li>2010
21135 <ul>
21136
21137 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
21138
21139 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
21140
21141 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
21142
21143 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
21144
21145 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
21146
21147 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
21148
21149 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
21150
21151 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
21152
21153 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
21154
21155 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
21156
21157 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
21158
21159 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
21160
21161 </ul></li>
21162
21163 <li>2009
21164 <ul>
21165
21166 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
21167
21168 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
21169
21170 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
21171
21172 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
21173
21174 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
21175
21176 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
21177
21178 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
21179
21180 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
21181
21182 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
21183
21184 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
21185
21186 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
21187
21188 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
21189
21190 </ul></li>
21191
21192 <li>2008
21193 <ul>
21194
21195 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
21196
21197 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
21198
21199 </ul></li>
21200
21201 </ul>
21202
21203
21204
21205 <h2>Tags</h2>
21206 <ul>
21207
21208  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
21209
21210  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
21211
21212  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
21213
21214  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
21215
21216  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
21217
21218  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
21219
21220  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
21221
21222  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
21223
21224  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (106)</a></li>
21225
21226  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (150)</a></li>
21227
21228  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
21229
21230  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
21231
21232  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (12)</a></li>
21233
21234  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
21235
21236  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (258)</a></li>
21237
21238  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
21239
21240  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
21241
21242  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (13)</a></li>
21243
21244  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (8)</a></li>
21245
21246  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
21247
21248  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (41)</a></li>
21249
21250  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
21251
21252  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
21253
21254  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
21255
21256  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
21257
21258  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
21259
21260  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
21261
21262  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
21263
21264  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (31)</a></li>
21265
21266  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (248)</a></li>
21267
21268  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (162)</a></li>
21269
21270  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (11)</a></li>
21271
21272  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
21273
21274  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (48)</a></li>
21275
21276  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (75)</a></li>
21277
21278  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
21279
21280  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
21281
21282  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
21283
21284  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
21285
21286  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
21287
21288  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
21289
21290  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
21291
21292  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
21293
21294  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
21295
21296  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
21297
21298  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
21299
21300  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (45)</a></li>
21301
21302  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
21303
21304  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
21305
21306  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (26)</a></li>
21307
21308  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
21309
21310  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
21311
21312  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (43)</a></li>
21313
21314  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
21315
21316  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (33)</a></li>
21317
21318 </ul>
21319
21320
21321     </div>
21322     <p style="text-align: right">
21323  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
21324 </p>
21325
21326   </body>
21327 </html>