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1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
3 <channel>
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged debian</title>
5 <description>Entries tagged debian</description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
7
8
9 <item>
10 <title>Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html</guid>
13 <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
14 <description>&lt;p&gt;During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
15 &lt;a href=&quot;https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/&quot;&gt;observed
16 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
17 believe a computer have a given security hole&lt;/a&gt; if it download a
18 security fix from a Debian mirror. This is a good reason to always
19 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
20 listening do not know which IP address to attack. In August, Richard
21 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
22 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
23 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
24 &lt;a href=&quot;http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/&quot;&gt;proposed
25 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror&lt;/a&gt;. He
26 was not the first to propose this, as the
27 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor&quot;&gt;apt-transport-tor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;
28 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
29 to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.torproject.org/&quot;&gt;Tor&lt;/a&gt;, but I was not
30 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.&lt;/p&gt;
31
32 &lt;p&gt;Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
33 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
34 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
35 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
36 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.&lt;/p&gt;
37
38 &lt;p&gt;Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
39 installing &lt;tt&gt;apt-transport-tor&lt;/tt&gt; and replacing http and https
40 urls with tor+http and https, and using the hidden service instead of
41 the official Debian mirror site. I recommend installing
42 &lt;tt&gt;etckeeper&lt;/tt&gt; before you start to have a history of the changes
43 done in /etc/.&lt;/p&gt;
44
45 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
46 apt install apt-transport-tor
47 sed -i &#39;s% http://ftp.debian.org/%tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%&#39; /etc/apt/sources.list
48 sed -i &#39;s% http% tor+http%&#39; /etc/apt/sources.list
49 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
50
51 &lt;p&gt;If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
52 the sed commands for these too. The sed command is assuming your are
53 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror. Adjust the command (or just
54 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
55
56 &lt;p&gt;This work in Debian Jessie and later. Note that tools like
57 &lt;tt&gt;apt-file&lt;/tt&gt; only recently started using the apt transport
58 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs. For
59 &lt;tt&gt;apt-file&lt;/tt&gt; you need the version currently in experimental,
60 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable. So if you
61 need a working &lt;tt&gt;apt-file&lt;/tt&gt;, this is not for you.&lt;/p&gt;
62
63 &lt;p&gt;Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
64 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
65 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
66 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine. Using Tor will
67 become normal for the machine in question.&lt;/p&gt;
68
69 &lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox&lt;/a&gt;, APT
70 is set up by default to use &lt;tt&gt;apt-transport-tor&lt;/tt&gt; when Tor is
71 enabled. It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
72 system.&lt;/p&gt;
73 </description>
74 </item>
75
76 <item>
77 <title>OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</title>
78 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html</link>
79 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html</guid>
80 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2015 01:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
81 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I was a kid, we used to collect &quot;car numbers&quot;, as we used to
82 call the car license plate numbers in those days. I would write the
83 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
84 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
85 exotic or special region codes and numbers. It was a fun game to pass
86 time, as we kids have plenty of it.&lt;/p&gt;
87
88 &lt;p&gt;A few days I came across
89 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr&quot;&gt;the OpenALPR
90 project&lt;/a&gt;, a free software project to automatically discover and
91 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
92 &quot;car numbers&quot; in a machine readable format. I&#39;ve been looking for
93 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
94 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition&quot;&gt;automatic
95 number plate recognition&lt;/a&gt; tool only is available in the hands of
96 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
97 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I
98 discovered the developer
99 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/747509&quot;&gt;wanted to get the tool into
100 Debian&lt;/a&gt;, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
101 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
102 archive.&lt;/p&gt;
103
104 &lt;p&gt;Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
105 it into Debian, where it currently
106 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html&quot;&gt;waits
107 in the NEW queue&lt;/a&gt; for review by the Debian ftpmasters.&lt;/p&gt;
108
109 &lt;p&gt;I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
110 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
111 surveillance system? Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
112 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
113 when number plates on my watch list are discovered. Another use case
114 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
115 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
116 car. When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
117 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
118 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway. I
119 guess for such use case it make sense. I am sure there are other use
120 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.&lt;/p&gt;
121
122 &lt;p&gt;If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
123 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
124 before running &quot;debuild&quot; to build the source. Or wait a bit until the
125 package show up in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
126 </description>
127 </item>
128
129 <item>
130 <title>Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</title>
131 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</link>
132 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</guid>
133 <pubDate>Sun, 20 Dec 2015 12:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
134 <description>&lt;p&gt;Around three years ago, I created
135 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;the isenkram
136 system&lt;/a&gt; to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
137 hardware related packages. A GUI system in the isenkram package will
138 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
139 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine. The same
140 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
141 tools in the isenkram-cli package. In addition to mapping hardware,
142 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
143 install needed firmware packages automatically. The key for this
144 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
145 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
146 with.&lt;/p&gt;
147
148 &lt;p&gt;I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
149 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
150 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
151 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
152 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
153 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
154 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/&quot;&gt;the
155 appstream system&lt;/a&gt; was announced. I got in touch and suggested to
156 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
157 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
158 Debian version of appstream.&lt;/p&gt;
159
160 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
161 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
162 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages. The only
163 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
164 pymissile package. I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
165 how do add the required
166 &lt;a href=&quot;https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html&quot;&gt;metadata
167 in pymissile&lt;/a&gt;. I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
168 this content:&lt;/p&gt;
169
170 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
171 &amp;lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&amp;gt;
172 &amp;lt;component&amp;gt;
173 &amp;lt;id&amp;gt;pymissile&amp;lt;/id&amp;gt;
174 &amp;lt;metadata_license&amp;gt;MIT&amp;lt;/metadata_license&amp;gt;
175 &amp;lt;name&amp;gt;pymissile&amp;lt;/name&amp;gt;
176 &amp;lt;summary&amp;gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&amp;lt;/summary&amp;gt;
177 &amp;lt;description&amp;gt;
178 &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;
179 Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
180 Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
181 motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
182 launcher.
183 &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;
184 &amp;lt;/description&amp;gt;
185 &amp;lt;provides&amp;gt;
186 &amp;lt;modalias&amp;gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&amp;lt;/modalias&amp;gt;
187 &amp;lt;/provides&amp;gt;
188 &amp;lt;/component&amp;gt;
189 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
190
191 &lt;p&gt;The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
192 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
193 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel. In this case, it
194 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
195 0202.&lt;/p&gt;
196
197 &lt;p&gt;Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
198 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
199 appstream files. Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
200 these files. A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
201 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
202 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use). But
203 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
204 upstream for this project is dormant.&lt;/p&gt;
205
206 &lt;p&gt;To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
207 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
208 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
209 package under /usr/share/appdata/. I did this by adding the following
210 line to debian/pymissile.install:&lt;/p&gt;
211
212 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
213 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
214 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
215
216 &lt;p&gt;With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
217 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
218 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
219 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
220 question.&lt;/p&gt;
221
222 &lt;p&gt;Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
223 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;DEP-11&lt;/a&gt; proposal.&lt;/p&gt;
224
225 &lt;p&gt;To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
226 try running this command on the command line:&lt;/p&gt;
227
228 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
229 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
230 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
231
232 &lt;p&gt;To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
233 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;my
234 blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
235 </description>
236 </item>
237
238 <item>
239 <title>The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</title>
240 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html</link>
241 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html</guid>
242 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov 2015 09:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
243 <description>&lt;p&gt;A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
244 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/&quot;&gt;The
245 GPL is not magic pixie dust&lt;/a&gt;&quot; explain the importance of making sure
246 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html&quot;&gt;GPL&lt;/a&gt; is enforced.
247 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:&lt;p&gt;
248
249 &lt;blockquote&gt;
250
251 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png&quot; width=&quot;194&quot; height=&quot;90&quot; alt=&quot;Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
252
253 &lt;blockquote&gt;
254 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.&lt;br/&gt;
255
256 The first step is to choose a
257 &lt;a href=&quot;https://copyleft.org/&quot;&gt;copyleft&lt;/a&gt; license for your
258 code.&lt;br/&gt;
259
260 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
261 &lt;b&gt;it must be enforced&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
262
263 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
264 work&lt;br/&gt;
265
266 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
267 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
268
269 &lt;p&gt;&lt;small&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://ebb.org/bkuhn/&quot;&gt;Bradley Kuhn&lt;/a&gt;, in
270 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/&quot; title=&quot;Free as in Freedom&quot;&gt;FaiF&lt;/a&gt;
271 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/&quot;&gt;episode
272 0x57&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/small&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
273
274 &lt;p&gt;As the Debian Website
275 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/794116&quot;&gt;used&lt;/a&gt;
276 &lt;a href=&quot;https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;amp;r2=1.25&quot;&gt;to&lt;/a&gt;
277 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
278 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
279 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
280 software products. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
281 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
282 such licenses are not enough. With the ongoing adoption of Free
283 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community&#39;s
284 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
285 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always. As Karen
286 and Bradley explained in &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/&quot; title=&quot;Free as in
287 Freedom&quot;&gt;FaiF&lt;/a&gt;
288 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/&quot;&gt;episode 0x57&lt;/a&gt;,
289 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
290 to protect it. The reality of today&#39;s world is that legal
291 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming. With
292 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gpl-violations.org/&quot;&gt;gpl-violations.org&lt;/a&gt; in hiatus
293 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/&quot;&gt;until&lt;/a&gt;
294 some time in 2016, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/&quot;&gt;Software
295 Freedom Conservancy&lt;/a&gt; (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
296 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
297 In March the SFC supported a
298 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/&quot;&gt;lawsuit
299 by Christoph Hellwig&lt;/a&gt; against VMware for refusing to
300 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html&quot;&gt;comply
301 with the GPL&lt;/a&gt; in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
302 kernel. Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
303 conferences
304 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/&quot;&gt;blocked
305 or cancelled their talks&lt;/a&gt;. As a result they have decided to rely
306 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
307 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft. So the SFC has
308 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/&quot;&gt;launched&lt;/a&gt;
309 a &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;campaign&lt;/a&gt; to create
310 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
311 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
312 Software.&lt;/p&gt;
313
314 &lt;p&gt;If you support Free Software,
315 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/&quot;&gt;like&lt;/a&gt;
316 what the SFC do, agree with their
317 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html&quot;&gt;compliance
318 principles&lt;/a&gt;, are happy about their
319 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;successes&lt;/a&gt; in 2015,
320 work on a project that is an SFC
321 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/&quot;&gt;member&lt;/a&gt; and or
322 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
323 &lt;a href=&quot;https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA&quot;&gt;Christopher
324 Allan Webber&lt;/a&gt;,
325 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/&quot;&gt;Carol
326 Smith&lt;/a&gt;,
327 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/&quot;&gt;Jono
328 Bacon&lt;/a&gt;, myself and
329 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt; in
330 becoming a
331 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;supporter&lt;/a&gt;. For the
332 next week your donation will be
333 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/&quot;&gt;matched&lt;/a&gt;
334 by an anonymous donor. Please also consider asking your employer to
335 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC. Don&#39;t forget to
336 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
337 social media accounts.&lt;/p&gt;
338
339 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
340
341 &lt;p&gt;I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
342 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself. Perhaps you should be a
343 supporter too?&lt;/p&gt;
344 </description>
345 </item>
346
347 <item>
348 <title>PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</title>
349 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html</link>
350 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html</guid>
351 <pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2015 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
352 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
353 set it up properly. I wanted to generate it offline and have it
354 available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp&quot;&gt;a OpenPGP
355 smart card&lt;/a&gt; for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
356 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever. But
357 finally I&#39;ve been able to complete the process, and have now moved
358 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key. See
359 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt&quot;&gt;the
360 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key&lt;/a&gt; for
361 the details. This is my new key:&lt;/p&gt;
362
363 &lt;pre&gt;
364 pub 3936R/&lt;a href=&quot;http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html&quot;&gt;111D6B29EE4E02F9&lt;/a&gt; 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
365 Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1 D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
366 uid Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere@hungry.com&amp;gt;
367 uid Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere@debian.org&amp;gt;
368 sub 4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
369 sub 4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
370 sub 4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
371 &lt;/pre&gt;
372
373 &lt;p&gt;The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
374 my old key.&lt;/p&gt;
375
376 &lt;p&gt;If you signed my old key
377 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html&quot;&gt;DB4CCC4B2A30D729&lt;/a&gt;),
378 I&#39;d very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
379 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
380 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.&lt;/p&gt;
381 </description>
382 </item>
383
384 <item>
385 <title>The life and death of a laptop battery</title>
386 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html</link>
387 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html</guid>
388 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Sep 2015 16:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
389 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
390 But this do not last. The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
391 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
392 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
393 all the time. Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
394 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
395 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
396
397 &lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png&quot;/&gt;
398
399 &lt;p&gt;First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
400 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
401 by someone else. I found
402 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;battery-stats&lt;/a&gt;,
403 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
404 broken. I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
405 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
406 from him. Via
407 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html&quot;&gt;a
408 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air&lt;/a&gt; I also
409 discovered
410 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git&quot;&gt;batlog&lt;/a&gt;, not
411 available in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
412
413 &lt;p&gt;I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
414 battery stats ever since. Now my
415 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
416 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
417 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity. My
418 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
419
420 &lt;pre&gt;
421 #!/bin/sh
422 # Inspired by
423 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
424 # See also
425 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
426 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
427
428 files=&quot;manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
429 energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status&quot;
430
431 if [ ! -e &quot;$logfile&quot; ] ; then
432 (
433 printf &quot;timestamp,&quot;
434 for f in $files; do
435 printf &quot;%s,&quot; $f
436 done
437 echo
438 ) &gt; &quot;$logfile&quot;
439 fi
440
441 log_battery() {
442 # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
443 # when several log processes run in parallel.
444 msg=$(printf &quot;%s,&quot; $(date +%s); \
445 for f in $files; do \
446 printf &quot;%s,&quot; $(cat $f); \
447 done)
448 echo &quot;$msg&quot;
449 }
450
451 cd /sys/class/power_supply
452
453 for bat in BAT*; do
454 (cd $bat &amp;&amp; log_battery &gt;&gt; &quot;$logfile&quot;)
455 done
456 &lt;/pre&gt;
457
458 &lt;p&gt;The script is called when the power management system detect a
459 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
460 and out of hibernation and suspend. In addition, it collect a value
461 every 10 minutes. This make it possible for me know when the battery
462 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
463 The code for the Debian package
464 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status&quot;&gt;is now
465 available on github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
466
467 &lt;p&gt;The collected log file look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
468
469 &lt;pre&gt;
470 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
471 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
472 [...]
473 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
474 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
475 &lt;/pre&gt;
476
477 &lt;p&gt;I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
478 over time. This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
479 battery.&lt;/p&gt;
480
481 &lt;p&gt;But why is this happening? Why are my laptop batteries always
482 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
483 satellites keep working year after year. If we are to believe
484 &lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries&quot;&gt;Battery
485 University&lt;/a&gt;, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
486 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
487 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
488 I&#39;ve been told that the Tesla electric cars
489 &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit&quot;&gt;limit
490 the charge of their batteries to 80%&lt;/a&gt;, with the option to charge to
491 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
492 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
493 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
494 Linux too.&lt;/p&gt;
495
496 &lt;p&gt;Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
497 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
498 preparation for a longer trip? I found
499 &lt;a href=&quot;http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity&quot;&gt;one
500 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
501 80%&lt;/a&gt;, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
502 load).&lt;/p&gt;
503
504 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
505 at the start. I also wonder why the &quot;full capacity&quot; increases some
506 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
507 back to design capacity. And I wonder if the discharge and charge
508 speed change over time, or if this stay the same. I did not yet try
509 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
510 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
511 those.&lt;/p&gt;
512
513 &lt;p&gt;Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
514 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
515 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
516 initially, and use &#39;tlp setcharge 40 80&#39; to change when charging start
517 and stop. I&#39;ve done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
518 and need to be replaced. The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
519 specific.&lt;/p&gt;
520 </description>
521 </item>
522
523 <item>
524 <title>New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</title>
525 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html</link>
526 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html</guid>
527 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Jul 2015 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
528 <description>&lt;p&gt;Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
529 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback. I wish to
530 thank every one of these. Several pointed me to the possibility of
531 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
532 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
533 machine. But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
534 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
535 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement. If I did
536 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
537 using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.francecrans.com/&quot;&gt;FrancEcrans&lt;/a&gt;, but it
538 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.&lt;/p&gt;
539
540 &lt;p&gt;One tip I got was to use the
541 &lt;a href=&quot;https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb&quot;&gt;Skinflint&lt;/a&gt; web service to
542 compare laptop models. It seem to have more models available than
543 prisjakt.no. Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
544 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
545 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
546 keyboards I tested. Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
547
548 &lt;p&gt;When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
549 newest Thinkpad X model. The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
550 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
551 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
552 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.corsac.net/X250/&quot;&gt;Corsac.net&lt;/a&gt;. The reports I
553 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent. Some say the keyboard
554 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
555 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
556 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
557 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
558 replace it. I&#39;m also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
559 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230. I&#39;m
560 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
561 noisy. In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
562 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.&lt;/p&gt;
563
564 &lt;p&gt;I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
565 &lt;a href=&quot;http://pro-star.com&quot;&gt;Pro-Star&lt;/a&gt;, another was
566 &lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/&quot;&gt;Libreboot&lt;/a&gt;.
567 The latter look very attractive to me.&lt;/p&gt;
568
569 &lt;p&gt;Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback. It help a lot
570 as I keep looking for a replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
571
572 &lt;p&gt;Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
573 &lt;a href=&quot;&quot;&gt;lapstore.de&lt;/a&gt; web shop for used laptops. They got several
574 different
575 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/&quot;&gt;old
576 thinkpad X models&lt;/a&gt;, and provide one year warranty.&lt;/p&gt;
577 </description>
578 </item>
579
580 <item>
581 <title>Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</title>
582 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html</link>
583 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html</guid>
584 <pubDate>Fri, 3 Jul 2015 07:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
585 <description>&lt;p&gt;My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
586 replacement soon. The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
587 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
588 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
589 flickering.&lt;/p&gt;
590
591 &lt;p&gt;My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
592 still as
593 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;I
594 described them in 2013&lt;/a&gt;. The last time I bought a laptop, I had
595 good help from
596 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353&quot;&gt;prisjakt.no&lt;/a&gt;
597 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
598 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually. Three button mouse
599 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
600 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
601 G2) lack three mouse buttons). It is also unclear to me how good the
602 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are. I hope Lenovo have not messed up
603 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
604 deteriorated since X41.&lt;/p&gt;
605
606 &lt;p&gt;I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
607 seem sensible to me? Are there better services around to search the
608 set of available laptops for features? Please send me an email if you
609 have suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;
610
611 &lt;p&gt;Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
612 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom&quot;&gt;list
613 of endorsed hardware&lt;/a&gt;, which is useful background information.&lt;/p&gt;
614 </description>
615 </item>
616
617 <item>
618 <title>How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</title>
619 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html</link>
620 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html</guid>
621 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Nov 2014 01:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
622 <description>&lt;p&gt;By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
623 sysvinit as its boot system by default. But how can one keep using
624 sysvinit in Jessie? It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
625 courtesy of
626 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html&quot;&gt;Erich
627 Schubert&lt;/a&gt; and
628 &lt;a href=&quot;http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/&quot;&gt;Simon
629 McVittie&lt;/a&gt;.
630
631 &lt;p&gt;If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
632 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
633 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit&lt;/tt&gt; with this content before
634 you upgrade:&lt;/p&gt;
635
636 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
637 Package: systemd-sysv
638 Pin: release o=Debian
639 Pin-Priority: -1
640 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
641
642 &lt;p&gt;This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
643 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
644 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
645 systemd as a default boot system. The end result should be that the
646 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.&lt;/p&gt;
647
648 &lt;p&gt;If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
649 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
650 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
651 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot. Either by
652 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
653 preseed file used. First, the kernel command line argument:
654
655 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
656 preseed/late_command=&quot;in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core&quot;
657 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
658
659 &lt;p&gt;Next, the line to use in a preseed file:&lt;/p&gt;
660
661 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
662 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
663 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
664
665 &lt;p&gt;One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
666 the sysvinit-core package.&lt;/p&gt;
667
668 &lt;p&gt;I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
669 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
670 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
671 devices show up during boot. But on the other hand, the new default
672 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
673 Jessie is released.&lt;/p&gt;
674
675 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
676 &lt;ahref=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg&quot;&gt;a
677 blog post by Torsten Glaser&lt;/a&gt;, added --purge to the preseed
678 line.&lt;/p&gt;
679 </description>
680 </item>
681
682 <item>
683 <title>A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</title>
684 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</link>
685 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</guid>
686 <pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
687 <description>&lt;p&gt;The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
688 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
689 democracy. But this right is under serious attack these days.&lt;/p&gt;
690
691 &lt;p&gt;A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
692 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
693 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
694 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor. Such SMTP option would be
695 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
696 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
697 to the people peeking on the wire. I
698 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html&quot;&gt;proposed
699 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October&lt;/a&gt; and got a
700 lot of useful feedback and suggestions. It also became obvious to me
701 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
702 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
703 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP&quot;&gt;the
704 Mailpile&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dee.su/cables&quot;&gt;the Cables&lt;/a&gt; systems
705 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.&lt;/p&gt;
706
707 &lt;p&gt;To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
708 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
709 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion. With such addresses
710 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
711 go to the correct SMTP server. To do this, one need to configure the
712 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
713 emails for this .onion domain. To learn more about Exim configuration
714 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
715 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
716 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian. Getting it to work
717 were fairly easy, and
718 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp&quot;&gt;the
719 source code for the Debian package&lt;/a&gt; is available from github. I
720 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
721 useful approach.&lt;/p&gt;
722
723 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
724 mail system installed (or run &lt;tt&gt;apt-get purge exim4-config&lt;/tt&gt; to
725 get rid of exim4). Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
726 above, build the deb and install it on the machine. Next, run
727 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service&lt;/tt&gt; and follow
728 the instructions to get the service up and running. Restart tor and
729 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
730 this:&lt;/p&gt;
731
732 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
733 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
734 --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
735 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
736
737 &lt;p&gt;This will test the SMTP delivery using tor. Replace the email
738 address with your own address to test your server. :)&lt;/p&gt;
739
740 &lt;p&gt;The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
741 easier and more automatic. Especially the tor setup need more work.
742 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
743 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
744 architecture independent. It would probably also make the code easier
745 to review. The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
746 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd. It would be better if
747 no daemon and no socket is needed. I suspect it is possible to get
748 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
749 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
750 system.&lt;/p&gt;
751
752 &lt;p&gt;Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
753 &lt;tt&gt;fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion&lt;/tt&gt; mail address, deliverable over
754 SMTorP. :)&lt;/p&gt;
755 </description>
756 </item>
757
758 <item>
759 <title>listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</title>
760 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</link>
761 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</guid>
762 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
763 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
764 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
765 operate. First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
766 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
767 and various options for each email address. This take a while for
768 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
769 job as a list moderator. But there is a quick alternative,
770 &lt;a href=&quot;http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin&quot;&gt;the
771 listadmin program&lt;/a&gt;. It allow you to check lists for new messages
772 to moderate in a fraction of a second. Here is a test run on two
773 lists I recently took over:&lt;/p&gt;
774
775 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
776 % time listadmin xiph
777 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
778 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
779
780 real 0m1.709s
781 user 0m0.232s
782 sys 0m0.012s
783 %
784 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
785
786 &lt;p&gt;In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
787 there are no message in the moderation queue. Every morning I
788 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
789 minutes. When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
790 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue. It took me
791 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
792 program.&lt;/p&gt;
793
794 &lt;p&gt;If you install
795 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin&quot;&gt;the listadmin
796 package&lt;/a&gt; from Debian and create a file &lt;tt&gt;~/.listadmin.ini&lt;/tt&gt;
797 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:&lt;/p&gt;
798
799 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
800 username username@example.org
801 spamlevel 23
802 default discard
803 discard_if_reason &quot;Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list.&quot;
804
805 password secret
806 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
807 mailman-list@lists.example.com
808
809 password hidden
810 other-list@otherserver.example.org
811 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
812
813 &lt;p&gt;There are other options to set as well. Check the manual page to
814 learn the details.&lt;/p&gt;
815
816 &lt;p&gt;If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
817 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
818 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
819 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:&lt;/p&gt;
820
821 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
822 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
823 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
824
825 &lt;p&gt;If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
826 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
827 initial screen dump (the xiph argument). Using an argument, only
828 lists matching the argument string will be processed. This make it
829 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
830 email.&lt;/p&gt;
831
832 &lt;p&gt;Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
833 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
834 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
835 time I could spend elsewhere over the years. It truly is nice free
836 software.&lt;/p&gt;
837
838 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
839 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
840 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
841
842 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-10-27: Added missing &#39;username&#39; statement in
843 configuration example. Also, I&#39;ve been told that the
844 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone. Not
845 sure why.&lt;/p&gt;
846 </description>
847 </item>
848
849 <item>
850 <title>Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</title>
851 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</link>
852 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</guid>
853 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
854 <description>&lt;p&gt;When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
855 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
856 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
857 Normally something more is needed. But thanks to
858 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html&quot;&gt;my isenkram
859 package&lt;/a&gt; and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
860 to do this using simple preseeding.&lt;/p&gt;
861
862 &lt;p&gt;The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
863 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
864 the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space
865 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
866 of this story.)&lt;/p&gt;
867
868 &lt;p&gt;To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
869 values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
870 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
871 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by
872 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
873 isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap
874 for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
875 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
876 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
877 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
878
879 &lt;p&gt;Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
880 most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding
881 the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
882 hardware it is the only option in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
883
884 &lt;p&gt;The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
885 firmware installed automatically by the installer:&lt;/p&gt;
886
887 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
888 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
889 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
890 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
891
892 &lt;p&gt;The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
893 both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also
894 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later. Installing both
895 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
896 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
897 and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by
898 default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is
899 implemented in the package currently in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
900
901 &lt;p&gt;If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
902 this recipe work for you. :)&lt;/p&gt;
903
904 &lt;p&gt;So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and
905 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
906 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the
907 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there
908 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):&lt;/p&gt;
909
910 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
911 Task: isenkram-packages
912 Section: hardware
913 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
914 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
915 proposed.
916 Test-new-install: show show
917 Relevance: 8
918 Packages: for-current-hardware
919
920 Task: isenkram-firmware
921 Section: hardware
922 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
923 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
924 packages are proposed.
925 Test-new-install: mark show
926 Relevance: 8
927 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
928 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
929
930 &lt;p&gt;The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
931 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
932 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a
933 list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script
934 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
935
936 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
937 #!/bin/sh
938 #
939 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
940 export PATH
941 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
942 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
943
944 &lt;p&gt;With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
945 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)&lt;/p&gt;
946
947 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
948 installed, run &lt;tt&gt;DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
949 --new-install&lt;/tt&gt; to get the list of packages that tasksel would
950 install.&lt;/p&gt;
951
952 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; will be
953 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
954 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
955 </description>
956 </item>
957
958 <item>
959 <title>Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</title>
960 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</link>
961 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</guid>
962 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
963 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
964 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
965 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
966 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:&lt;/p&gt;
967
968 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
969
970 &lt;p&gt;If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
971 about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
972 &lt;a href=&quot;http://revealingerrors.com/&quot;&gt;errors can reveal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
973 </description>
974 </item>
975
976 <item>
977 <title>New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</title>
978 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</link>
979 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</guid>
980 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
981 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd project&lt;/a&gt;
982 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
983 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
984 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
985 Dibb.&lt;/p&gt;
986
987 &lt;p&gt;I just wrapped up
988 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/&quot;&gt;a
989 new lsdvd release&lt;/a&gt;, available in git or from
990 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;the
991 download page&lt;/a&gt;. This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
992 0.17.&lt;/p&gt;
993
994 &lt;ul&gt;
995
996 &lt;li&gt;Ignore &#39;phantom&#39; audio, subtitle tracks&lt;/li&gt;
997 &lt;li&gt;Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
998 non-existant, to work around additional copy protection&lt;/li&gt;
999 &lt;li&gt;Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles&lt;/li&gt;
1000 &lt;li&gt;Fix pallete display of first entry&lt;/li&gt;
1001 &lt;li&gt;Fix include orders&lt;/li&gt;
1002 &lt;li&gt;Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway&lt;/li&gt;
1003 &lt;li&gt;Fix the chapter count&lt;/li&gt;
1004 &lt;li&gt;Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1005 the palette size is the same.&lt;/li&gt;
1006 &lt;li&gt;Fix array printing.&lt;/li&gt;
1007 &lt;li&gt;Correct subsecond calculations.&lt;/li&gt;
1008 &lt;li&gt;Add sector information to the output format.&lt;/li&gt;
1009 &lt;li&gt;Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1010 with more GCC compiler warnings.&lt;/li&gt;
1011
1012 &lt;/ul&gt;
1013
1014 &lt;p&gt;This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1015 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1016 project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1017 </description>
1018 </item>
1019
1020 <item>
1021 <title>How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</title>
1022 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</link>
1023 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</guid>
1024 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1025 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1026 project&lt;/a&gt; provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1027 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1028 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1029 boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1030 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1031 to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1032 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1033 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1034 future. The
1035 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie&quot;&gt;current
1036 status&lt;/a&gt; can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1037 work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1038 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
1039 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.&lt;/p&gt;
1040
1041 &lt;p&gt;First, download the test ISO via
1042 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;ftp&lt;/a&gt;,
1043 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;http&lt;/a&gt;
1044 or rsync (use
1045 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1046 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1047 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1048 install with some tweaking.&lt;/p&gt;
1049
1050 &lt;p&gt;When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1051 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run&lt;/p&gt;
1052
1053 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1054 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1055 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1056
1057 &lt;p&gt;and add &#39;exit 0&#39; as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1058 optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1059 and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1060 due to a known bug in eatmydata.&lt;/p&gt;
1061
1062 &lt;p&gt;When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1063 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
1064 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1065 your need.&lt;/p&gt;
1066
1067 &lt;p&gt;If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1068 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1069 education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1070 or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1071 metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1072 graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
1073 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1074 days.&lt;/p&gt;
1075
1076 &lt;p&gt;I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1077 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1078 update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1079 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1080 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
1081 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
1082 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1083 provided in bug &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/702711&quot;&gt;#702711&lt;/a&gt;.
1084 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
1085
1086 &lt;p&gt;I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1087 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1088 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.&lt;/p&gt;
1089 </description>
1090 </item>
1091
1092 <item>
1093 <title>Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</title>
1094 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</link>
1095 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</guid>
1096 <pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1097 <description>&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd tool&lt;/a&gt;
1098 to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
1099 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1100 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
1101 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1102 its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1103 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1104 project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
1105 get &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd&quot;&gt;an updated version
1106 into Debian&lt;/a&gt;. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1107 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1108 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1109 over. And yesterday, I became project admin.&lt;/p&gt;
1110
1111 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1112 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1113 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1114 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1115 I&#39;ve added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1116 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
1117 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1118 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/&quot;&gt;the git source&lt;/a&gt; and join
1119 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/&quot;&gt;the project mailing
1120 list&lt;/a&gt;. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1121 </description>
1122 </item>
1123
1124 <item>
1125 <title>Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</title>
1126 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html</link>
1127 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html</guid>
1128 <pubDate>Tue, 16 Sep 2014 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
1129 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; installer could be
1130 a lot quicker. When we install more than 2000 packages in
1131 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; using
1132 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1133 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1134 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/613428&quot;&gt;bug #613428&lt;/a&gt; about too
1135 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1136 responsible for unpacking the binary packages. Other parts (like code
1137 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1138 installation. All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1139 me. If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1140 to salvage the half installed system. So the failure sync-ing is
1141 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1142 relevant while the installer is running.&lt;/p&gt;
1143
1144 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1145 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1146 change the code in several packages. The idea is not new, but I have
1147 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before. It
1148 depend on the small and clever package
1149 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata&quot;&gt;eatmydata&lt;/a&gt;, which
1150 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1151 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1152 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly. Instead of
1153 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1154 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1155 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1156 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1157 &quot;eatmydata&amp;nbsp;$program&amp;nbsp;$@&quot;, to get the same effect.
1158 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1159 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.&lt;/p&gt;
1160
1161 &lt;p&gt;The effect was stunning. In my first test it reduced the running
1162 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1163 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1164 Latitude D505 machine. I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1165 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1166 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1167 installation. As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1168 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1169 installation. I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1170 and got these results. The time measured is the time stamp in
1171 /var/log/syslog between the &quot;pkgsel: starting tasksel&quot; and the
1172 &quot;pkgsel: finishing up&quot; lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1173 yourself. In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1174 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1175 dialog.&lt;/p&gt;
1176
1177 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
1178
1179 &lt;tr&gt;
1180 &lt;th&gt;Machine/setup&lt;/th&gt;
1181 &lt;th&gt;Original tasksel&lt;/th&gt;
1182 &lt;th&gt;Optimised tasksel&lt;/th&gt;
1183 &lt;th&gt;Reduction&lt;/th&gt;
1184 &lt;/tr&gt;
1185
1186 &lt;tr&gt;
1187 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE&lt;/td&gt;
1188 &lt;td&gt;64 min (07:46-08:50)&lt;/td&gt;
1189 &lt;td&gt;&lt;44 min (11:27-12:11)&lt;/td&gt;
1190 &lt;td&gt;&gt;20 min 18%&lt;/td&gt;
1191 &lt;/tr&gt;
1192
1193 &lt;tr&gt;
1194 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE&lt;/td&gt;
1195 &lt;td&gt;57 min (08:48-09:45)&lt;/td&gt;
1196 &lt;td&gt;34 min (07:43-08:17)&lt;/td&gt;
1197 &lt;td&gt;23 min 40%&lt;/td&gt;
1198 &lt;/tr&gt;
1199
1200 &lt;tr&gt;
1201 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Minimal&lt;/td&gt;
1202 &lt;td&gt;22 min (10:37-10:59)&lt;/td&gt;
1203 &lt;td&gt;11 min (11:16-11:27)&lt;/td&gt;
1204 &lt;td&gt;11 min 50%&lt;/td&gt;
1205 &lt;/tr&gt;
1206
1207 &lt;tr&gt;
1208 &lt;td&gt;Thinkpad X200 Minimal&lt;/td&gt;
1209 &lt;td&gt;6 min (08:19-08:25)&lt;/td&gt;
1210 &lt;td&gt;4 min (08:04-08:08)&lt;/td&gt;
1211 &lt;td&gt;2 min 33%&lt;/td&gt;
1212 &lt;/tr&gt;
1213
1214 &lt;tr&gt;
1215 &lt;td&gt;Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE&lt;/td&gt;
1216 &lt;td&gt;19 min (09:21-09:40)&lt;/td&gt;
1217 &lt;td&gt;15 min (10:25-10:40)&lt;/td&gt;
1218 &lt;td&gt;4 min 21%&lt;/td&gt;
1219 &lt;/tr&gt;
1220
1221 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1222
1223 &lt;p&gt;The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1224 time is spent downloading packages. The connection to the Internet
1225 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1226 significant factor in the measurement. Download typically took a few
1227 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1228 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
1229
1230 &lt;p&gt;The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1231 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/&quot;&gt;Debian
1232 Installer&lt;/a&gt;, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1233 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1234 installation. I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1235 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1236 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1237 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO. The
1238 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1239 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i. If the code is
1240 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1241 for the entire installation.&lt;/p&gt;
1242
1243 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve implemented this in the
1244 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install&quot;&gt;debian-edu-install&lt;/a&gt;
1245 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1246 Debian Edu installation. If you want to test this yourself, you can
1247 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb). One shell script
1248 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:&lt;/p&gt;
1249
1250 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1251 #!/bin/sh
1252 set -e
1253 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1254 info() {
1255 logger -t my-pkgsel &quot;info: $*&quot;
1256 }
1257 error() {
1258 logger -t my-pkgsel &quot;error: $*&quot;
1259 }
1260 override_install() {
1261 apt-install eatmydata || true
1262 if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1263 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1264 file=/usr/bin/$bin
1265 # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1266 if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1267 info &quot;diverting $file using eatmydata&quot;
1268 printf &quot;#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \&quot;\$@\&quot;\n&quot; \
1269 &gt; /target$file.edu
1270 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1271 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1272 --rename --quiet --add $file
1273 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1274 else
1275 error &quot;unable to divert $file, as it is missing.&quot;
1276 fi
1277 done
1278 else
1279 error &quot;unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage&quot;
1280 fi
1281 }
1282
1283 override_install
1284 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1285
1286 &lt;p&gt;To clean up, another shell script should go into
1287 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1288
1289 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1290 #! /bin/sh -e
1291 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1292 error() {
1293 logger -t my-finish-install &quot;error: $@&quot;
1294 }
1295 remove_install_override() {
1296 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1297 file=/usr/bin/$bin
1298 if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1299 rm /target$file
1300 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1301 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1302 rm /target$file.edu
1303 else
1304 error &quot;Missing divert for $file.&quot;
1305 fi
1306 done
1307 sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1308 }
1309
1310 remove_install_override
1311 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1312
1313 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1314 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1315 finish-install.d scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
1316
1317 &lt;p&gt;By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1318 Debian installer too? I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1319 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough. It also
1320 depend on the side effects of the change. I&#39;m not aware of any, but I
1321 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1322 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1323 fsync() having effect? Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1324 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1325 everyone.&lt;/p&gt;
1326
1327 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1328 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1329 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/702711&quot;&gt;bug #702711&lt;/a&gt;. An updated
1330 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.&lt;/p&gt;
1331
1332 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1333 the optimization work again. And I have discovered that the
1334 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1335 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package. See
1336 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.&lt;/p&gt;
1337
1338 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1339 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/765738&quot;&gt;bug #765738&lt;/a&gt; in eatmydata only
1340 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1341 optimization again. If &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/768893&quot;&gt;unblock
1342 request 768893&lt;/a&gt; is accepted, it should be working again.&lt;/p&gt;
1343 </description>
1344 </item>
1345
1346 <item>
1347 <title>Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</title>
1348 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html</link>
1349 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html</guid>
1350 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1351 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1352 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User Group&lt;/a&gt; about
1353 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/&quot;&gt;the
1354 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net&lt;/a&gt;, and was very happy to
1355 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1356 use when looking for peoples public key. So far I have used
1357 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1358 were misbehaving, but those days are ended. The servers I have used
1359 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable. I hope
1360 those problems are gone now.&lt;/p&gt;
1361
1362 &lt;p&gt;Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1363 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sks-keyservers.net/&quot;&gt;sks-keyservers.net&lt;/a&gt; service
1364 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1365 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date. It must be
1366 better than what I have used so far. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1367
1368 &lt;p&gt;Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1369 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1370 not seem to be used in Debian. Perhaps it should?&lt;/p&gt;
1371
1372 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I&#39;ve updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1373 line:&lt;/p&gt;
1374
1375 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1376 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1377 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1378
1379 &lt;p&gt;With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1380 entries in DNS. Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1381 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1382 keyserver automatically should their need it:&lt;/p&gt;
1383
1384 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1385 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1386 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1387 %
1388 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1389
1390 &lt;p&gt;Now if only
1391 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/&quot;&gt;the
1392 HKP lookup protocol&lt;/a&gt; supported finding signature paths, I would be
1393 very happy. It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1394 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1395 another key. Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1396 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1397 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1398 This is as far as I can tell not possible today. Perhaps something
1399 for a future version of the protocol?&lt;/p&gt;
1400 </description>
1401 </item>
1402
1403 <item>
1404 <title>From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</title>
1405 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html</link>
1406 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html</guid>
1407 <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1408 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1409 project&lt;/a&gt; provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1410 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1411 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation. This text is about how the
1412 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.&lt;/p&gt;
1413
1414 &lt;p&gt;One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1415 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1416 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1417 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1418 in sync. And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1419 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1420 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1421 edit the documentation using a web browser. We also want it to be
1422 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1423 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1424 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1425 goals.&lt;/p&gt;
1426
1427 &lt;p&gt;We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1428 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/&quot;&gt;Debian
1429 wiki&lt;/a&gt;, as several wiki pages written in English. It consist of one
1430 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1431 for each chapter, and finally one &quot;collection page&quot; gluing all the
1432 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1433 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne&quot;&gt;the
1434 AllInOne page&lt;/a&gt;). The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1435 processing and translations. Thanks to the fact that the
1436 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/&quot;&gt;MoinMoin&lt;/a&gt; installation on
1437 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1438 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;the Docbook format&lt;/a&gt;, we can fetch
1439 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1440 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1441 manual. This process also download images and transform image
1442 references to use the locally downloaded images. The generated
1443 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1444 using the &lt;tt&gt;documentation/scripts/get_manual&lt;/tt&gt; program, and the
1445 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1446 a handfull of images. The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1447 and epub versions of the English manual. This is the basic step of
1448 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1449 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1450 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.&lt;/p&gt;
1451
1452 &lt;p&gt;But English documentation is not enough for us. We want translated
1453 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1454 track the English original. For this we use the
1455 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html&quot;&gt;poxml&lt;/a&gt; package,
1456 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1457 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1458 translation tools used by those translating free software. The pot
1459 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1460 files), which the translations update with the native language
1461 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1462 original. The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1463 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1464 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1465 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml). This translated (or partly
1466 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1467 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1468 of the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;
1469
1470 &lt;p&gt;The translators use different tools to edit the .po files. We
1471 recommend using
1472 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/&quot;&gt;lokalize&lt;/a&gt;,
1473 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1474 &lt;a href=&quot;http://pootle.translatehouse.org/&quot;&gt;Poodle&lt;/a&gt; or
1475 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.transifex.com/&quot;&gt;Transifex&lt;/a&gt;. All we care about
1476 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository. Updated
1477 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1478 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc&quot;&gt;bug reports
1479 against the debian-edu-doc package&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1480
1481 &lt;p&gt;One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1482 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1483 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1484 this regard). For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1485 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1486 translated images by storing translated versions in
1487 images/$LANGUAGECODE/. I am a bit unsure about the details here. The
1488 package maintainers know more.&lt;/p&gt;
1489
1490 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1491 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/&quot;&gt;the content
1492 of the documentation packages on the web&lt;/a&gt;. See for example the
1493 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf&quot;&gt;Italian
1494 PDF version&lt;/a&gt; or the
1495 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html&quot;&gt;German
1496 HTML version&lt;/a&gt;. We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1497 but perhaps it will be done in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
1498
1499 &lt;p&gt;To learn more, check out
1500 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html&quot;&gt;the
1501 debian-edu-doc package&lt;/a&gt;,
1502 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/&quot;&gt;the
1503 manual on the wiki&lt;/a&gt; and
1504 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations&quot;&gt;the
1505 translation instructions&lt;/a&gt; in the manual.&lt;/p&gt;
1506 </description>
1507 </item>
1508
1509 <item>
1510 <title>Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</title>
1511 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</link>
1512 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</guid>
1513 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1514 <description>&lt;p&gt;It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
1515 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
1516 So I implemented one, using
1517 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;my Isenkram
1518 package&lt;/a&gt;. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
1519 run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option,
1520 &quot;Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)&quot;. When you
1521 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
1522 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.&lt;p&gt;
1523
1524 &lt;p&gt;The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
1525 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
1526 packages to install. The first part is in
1527 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
1528 this:&lt;/p&gt;
1529
1530 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1531 Task: isenkram
1532 Section: hardware
1533 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1534 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1535 proposed.
1536 Test-new-install: mark show
1537 Relevance: 8
1538 Packages: for-current-hardware
1539 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1540
1541 &lt;p&gt;The second part is in
1542 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
1543 this:&lt;/p&gt;
1544
1545 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1546 #!/bin/sh
1547 #
1548 (
1549 isenkram-lookup
1550 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1551 ) | sort -u
1552 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1553
1554 &lt;p&gt;All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
1555 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
1556 have installed on our machines. I&#39;ve not been able to find a way to
1557 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
1558 before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful,
1559 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.&lt;/p&gt;
1560
1561 &lt;p&gt;The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
1562 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
1563 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
1564 database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database
1565 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
1566 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/719837&quot;&gt;#719837&lt;/a&gt; and
1567 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/730704&quot;&gt;#730704&lt;/a&gt;). The cause is in
1568 the python-apt code (bug
1569 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/745487&quot;&gt;#745487&lt;/a&gt;), but using a
1570 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
1571 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
1572 around 2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop
1573 daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
1574 unstable today.&lt;/p&gt;
1575
1576 &lt;p&gt;I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1577 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1578 use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper
1579 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1580 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;DEP-11&lt;/a&gt;, and
1581 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive&quot;&gt;GSoC
1582 project&lt;/a&gt; will take place this summer to improve the situation. I
1583 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1584 start using the information when it is ready.&lt;/p&gt;
1585
1586 &lt;p&gt;If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1587 add a &quot;Xb-Modaliases&quot; header to your control file like I did in
1588 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;the pymissile
1589 package&lt;/a&gt; or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1590 package. See also
1591 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;all my
1592 blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt; for details on the notation. I expect
1593 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1594 moment I got no better place to store it.&lt;/p&gt;
1595 </description>
1596 </item>
1597
1598 <item>
1599 <title>FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</title>
1600 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html</link>
1601 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html</guid>
1602 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2014 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1603 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox
1604 project&lt;/a&gt; is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1605 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1606 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1607 encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
1608 today a major mile stone was reached.&lt;/p&gt;
1609
1610 &lt;p&gt;Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1611 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
1612 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1613 during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
1614 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1615 Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1616 build everything directly from Debian. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1617
1618 &lt;p&gt;Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1619 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;,
1620 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt;,
1621 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite&quot;&gt;pagekite&lt;/a&gt;,
1622 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor&quot;&gt;tor&lt;/a&gt;,
1623 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;,
1624 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud&quot;&gt;owncloud&lt;/a&gt; and
1625 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq&quot;&gt;dnsmasq&lt;/a&gt;. There
1626 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
1627 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
1628 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie&quot;&gt;check out
1629 the manual&lt;/a&gt; and help us improve it.&lt;/p&gt;
1630
1631 &lt;p&gt;To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1632 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1633 become root:&lt;/p&gt;
1634
1635 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1636 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1637 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1638 u-boot-tools
1639 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1640 freedom-maker
1641 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1642 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1643
1644 &lt;p&gt;Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1645 devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1646 details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
1647 make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1648 virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1649 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
1650 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1651 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.&lt;/p&gt;
1652
1653 &lt;p&gt;If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1654 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1655 the preseed values:&lt;/p&gt;
1656
1657 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1658 url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&lt;/a&gt;
1659 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1660
1661 &lt;p&gt;I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1662 it still work.&lt;/p&gt;
1663
1664 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1665 systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
1666 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
1667 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1668 during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
1669 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1670 be run from the plinth web interface.&lt;/p&gt;
1671
1672 &lt;p&gt;Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1673 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1674 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC (#freedombox on
1675 irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
1676 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
1677 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
1678 </description>
1679 </item>
1680
1681 <item>
1682 <title>S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</title>
1683 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</link>
1684 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</guid>
1685 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Apr 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1686 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1687 solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
1688 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1689 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1690 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1691 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1692 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1693 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
1694 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1695 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
1696 I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
1697 have looked at a system called
1698 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/&quot;&gt;S3QL&lt;/a&gt;, a locally
1699 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.&lt;/p&gt;
1700
1701 &lt;p&gt;S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1702 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1703 Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
1704 providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1705 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
1706 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1707 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1708 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1709 while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
1710 have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
1711 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1712 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1713 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.&lt;/p&gt;
1714
1715 &lt;p&gt;It is simple to use. I&#39;m using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1716 package is included already. So to get started, run &lt;tt&gt;apt-get
1717 install s3ql&lt;/tt&gt;. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
1718 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1719 &lt;a href=&quot;https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy&quot;&gt;how
1720 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service&lt;/a&gt;, because I trust the laws
1721 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1722 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1723 in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
1724 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage&quot;&gt;S3QL
1725 Filesystem for HPC Storage&lt;/a&gt; by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1726 Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1727 the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
1728 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1729 account.&lt;/p&gt;
1730
1731 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
1732 system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
1733 file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
1734 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
1735 I&#39;ll refer to it as &lt;tt&gt;bucket-name&lt;/tt&gt; below. In addition, one need
1736 the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
1737 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
1738
1739 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1740 [s3c]
1741 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1742 backend-login: API-login
1743 backend-password: API-password
1744 fs-passphrase: local-password
1745 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1746
1747 &lt;p&gt;I create my local passphrase using &lt;tt&gt;pwget 50&lt;/tt&gt; or similar,
1748 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
1749 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
1750 details and password to create it:&lt;/p&gt;
1751
1752 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1753 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
1754 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1755 --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1756 Enter backend login:
1757 Enter backend password:
1758 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user&#39;s guide, especially
1759 the &#39;Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data&#39; section.
1760 Enter encryption password:
1761 Confirm encryption password:
1762 Generating random encryption key...
1763 Creating metadata tables...
1764 Dumping metadata...
1765 ..objects..
1766 ..blocks..
1767 ..inodes..
1768 ..inode_blocks..
1769 ..symlink_targets..
1770 ..names..
1771 ..contents..
1772 ..ext_attributes..
1773 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1774 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
1775 # &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1776
1777 &lt;p&gt;The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
1778
1779 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1780 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1781 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1782 Using 4 upload threads.
1783 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
1784 Reading metadata...
1785 ..objects..
1786 ..blocks..
1787 ..inodes..
1788 ..inode_blocks..
1789 ..symlink_targets..
1790 ..names..
1791 ..contents..
1792 ..ext_attributes..
1793 Mounting filesystem...
1794 # df -h /s3ql
1795 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1796 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name 1.0T 0 1.0T 0% /s3ql
1797 #
1798 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1799
1800 &lt;p&gt;The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
1801 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
1802 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
1803 running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
1804 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
1805 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
1806
1807 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1808 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
1809 #
1810 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1811
1812 &lt;p&gt;There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
1813 correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
1814 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the &quot;already
1815 mounted&quot; flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
1816 file system:&lt;/p&gt;
1817
1818 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1819 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1820 Using cached metadata.
1821 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
1822 Checking DB integrity...
1823 Creating temporary extra indices...
1824 Checking lost+found...
1825 Checking cached objects...
1826 Checking names (refcounts)...
1827 Checking contents (names)...
1828 Checking contents (inodes)...
1829 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
1830 Checking objects (reference counts)...
1831 Checking objects (backend)...
1832 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
1833 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
1834 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
1835 Checking objects (sizes)...
1836 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1837 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1838 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1839 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1840 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1841 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1842 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1843 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1844 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1845 Checking directory reachability...
1846 Checking unix conventions...
1847 Checking referential integrity...
1848 Dropping temporary indices...
1849 Backing up old metadata...
1850 Dumping metadata...
1851 ..objects..
1852 ..blocks..
1853 ..inodes..
1854 ..inode_blocks..
1855 ..symlink_targets..
1856 ..names..
1857 ..contents..
1858 ..ext_attributes..
1859 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1860 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1861 #
1862 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1863
1864 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1865 quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
1866 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1867 house. Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
1868 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1869 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1870 Both were measured using &lt;tt&gt;dd&lt;/tt&gt;. So for me, the bottleneck is my
1871 network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
1872 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1873 working set.&lt;/p&gt;
1874
1875 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1876 time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
1877 busy:&lt;/p&gt;
1878
1879 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1880 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1881 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1882 Using 8 upload threads.
1883 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
1884 #
1885 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1886
1887 &lt;p&gt;The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
1888 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default. To ensure the
1889 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
1890 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
1891 s3qlctrl:
1892
1893 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1894 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
1895 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
1896 #
1897 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1898
1899 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
1900 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
1901 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
1902 a report:&lt;/p&gt;
1903
1904 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1905 # s3qlstat /s3ql
1906 Directory entries: 9141
1907 Inodes: 9143
1908 Data blocks: 8851
1909 Total data size: 22049.38 MB
1910 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
1911 After compression: 21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
1912 Database size: 2.39 MB (uncompressed)
1913 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
1914 #
1915 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1916
1917 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
1918 storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
1919 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.greenqloud.com/&quot;&gt;Greenqloud&lt;/a&gt;,
1920 &lt;a href=&quot;http://drive.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Drive&lt;/a&gt;,
1921 &lt;a href=&quot;http://aws.amazon.com/s3/&quot;&gt;Amazon S3 web serivces&lt;/a&gt;,
1922 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rackspace.com/&quot;&gt;Rackspace&lt;/a&gt; and
1923 &lt;a href=&quot;http://crowncloud.net/&quot;&gt;Crowncloud&lt;/A&gt;. The latter even
1924 accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
1925 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
1926 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
1927 best.&lt;/p&gt;
1928
1929 &lt;p&gt;While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
1930 and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
1931 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
1932 science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
1933 poster is titled
1934 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf&quot;&gt;An
1935 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
1936 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Hsing-Bung
1937 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
1938 and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
1939
1940 &lt;p&gt;Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
1941 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
1942 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
1943 it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
1944 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html&quot;&gt;my
1945 test code to check file system semantics&lt;/a&gt;, I was happy to discover that
1946 no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
1947 directories, if one chooses to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
1948
1949 &lt;p&gt;If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
1950 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
1951 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tarsnap.com/&quot;&gt;Tarsnap service&lt;/a&gt;, which also
1952 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
1953 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
1954 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
1955 only read from it.&lt;/p&gt;
1956
1957 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1958 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1959 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1960 </description>
1961 </item>
1962
1963 <item>
1964 <title>Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</title>
1965 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</link>
1966 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</guid>
1967 <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1968 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox
1969 project&lt;/a&gt; is working on providing the software and hardware for
1970 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
1971 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
1972 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
1973 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
1974 release (0.2).&lt;/p&gt;
1975
1976 &lt;p&gt;And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
1977 new version will provide &quot;hard drive&quot; / SD card / USB stick images for
1978 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
1979 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
1980 file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
1981 where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
1982 the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
1983 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
1984 and build using
1985 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap&quot;&gt;vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;
1986 with a user with sudo access to become root:
1987
1988 &lt;pre&gt;
1989 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1990 freedom-maker
1991 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1992 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1993 u-boot-tools
1994 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1995 &lt;/pre&gt;
1996
1997 &lt;p&gt;Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1998 devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
1999 want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to &lt;a
2000 href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/741407&quot;&gt;a race condition in
2001 vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;, the build might fail without the patch to the
2002 kpartx call.&lt;/p&gt;
2003
2004 &lt;p&gt;If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2005 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2006 the preseed values:&lt;/p&gt;
2007
2008 &lt;pre&gt;
2009 url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&lt;/a&gt;
2010 &lt;/pre&gt;
2011
2012 &lt;p&gt;But note that due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/740673&quot;&gt;a
2013 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie&lt;/a&gt;, the installer will
2014 currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
2015 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;apt-cdrom ident&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; process when it hang a few times during the
2016 installation will get the installation going. This affect all
2017 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.&lt;/p&gt;
2018
2019 &lt;p&gt;Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2020 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2021 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC (#freedombox on
2022 irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
2023 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
2024 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
2025 </description>
2026 </item>
2027
2028 <item>
2029 <title>New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</title>
2030 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</link>
2031 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</guid>
2032 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Feb 2014 21:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
2033 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2034 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2035 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;. I called the project
2036 ng-utils, and it has served me well. I placed the project under the
2037 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/&quot;&gt;Hungry Programmer&lt;/a&gt; umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2038 repository. But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2039 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2040 proper home since then.&lt;/p&gt;
2041
2042 &lt;p&gt;Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2043 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2044 a proper source control system. I applied for a project on
2045 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Alioth&lt;/a&gt;, but did not have time
2046 to follow up on it. Until today. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2047
2048 &lt;p&gt;After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2049 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2050 history of the project. I published all release tarballs and imported
2051 them into the git repository. As the project is really stable and not
2052 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2053 release and call it 1.0. Visit the new project home on
2054 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&quot;&gt;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&lt;/a&gt;
2055 if you want to check it out. The new version is also uploaded into
2056 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html&quot;&gt;Debian Unstable&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2057 </description>
2058 </item>
2059
2060 <item>
2061 <title>Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</title>
2062 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</link>
2063 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</guid>
2064 <pubDate>Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2065 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2066 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2067 boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
2068 &lt;a href=&quot;https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html&quot;&gt;great
2069 Google Summer of Code work&lt;/a&gt; done last summer by Justus Winter to
2070 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
2071 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2072 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&quot;&gt;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;,
2073 and started it using virt-manager.&lt;/p&gt;
2074
2075 &lt;p&gt;The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2076 password) was to get the network operational. I followed
2077 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install&quot;&gt;the
2078 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page&lt;/a&gt; and ran these
2079 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2080 kvm internal DHCP server:&lt;/p&gt;
2081
2082 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2083 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2084 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[p]finet/ { print $2}&#39;)
2085 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[d]evnode/ { print $2}&#39;)
2086 dhclient /dev/eth0
2087 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2088
2089 &lt;p&gt;After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2090 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2091 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.&lt;/p&gt;
2092
2093 &lt;p&gt;But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2094 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2095 set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2096 compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
2097 side.&lt;/p&gt;
2098
2099 &lt;p&gt;Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2100 stuff:&lt;/p&gt;
2101
2102 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2103 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
2104 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2105 EOF
2106 apt-get update
2107 apt-get dist-upgrade
2108 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2109 sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2110 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2111 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2112
2113 &lt;p&gt;To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2114 &lt;tt&gt;reboot-hurd&lt;/tt&gt; instead of just &lt;tt&gt;reboot&lt;/tt&gt;, as there is not
2115 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2116 &#39;reboot&#39; command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2117 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2118 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2119 start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
2120 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2121 ssh instead.
2122
2123 &lt;p&gt;Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2124 fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2125 figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2126 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
2127 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2128 adding this repository to the machine:&lt;/p&gt;
2129
2130 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2131 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
2132 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2133 EOF
2134 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2135
2136 &lt;p&gt;At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2137 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2138 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2139 BTS. This is the completely list of &quot;unofficial&quot; packages installed:&lt;/p&gt;
2140
2141 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2142 # aptitude search &#39;?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))&#39;
2143 i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2144 i gdb - GNU Debugger
2145 i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
2146 i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
2147 i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2148 i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2149 i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2150 i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2151 i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2152 i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2153 i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2154 i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2155 i xorg - X.Org X Window System
2156 i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
2157 i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2158 #
2159 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2160
2161 &lt;p&gt;All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2162 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2163 the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
2164 command line stuff.&lt;p&gt;
2165 </description>
2166 </item>
2167
2168 <item>
2169 <title>New chrpath release 0.16</title>
2170 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</link>
2171 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</guid>
2172 <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2173 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; is a nice tool to
2174 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2175 analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2176 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2177 the source. The company behind it provide
2178 &lt;a href=&quot;https://scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;check of free software projects as
2179 a community service&lt;/a&gt;, and many hundred free software projects are
2180 already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2181 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2182 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/&quot;&gt;gnash&lt;/a&gt; and
2183 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/&quot;&gt;ipmitool&lt;/a&gt;
2184 projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
2185 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2186 check, and decided to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179&quot;&gt;request
2187 checking of the chrpath project&lt;/a&gt;. It was
2188 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
2189 these were real, mostly resource &quot;leak&quot; when the program detected an
2190 error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2191 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2192 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2193 the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
2194 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel&quot;&gt;a
2195 mailing list for the chrpath developers&lt;/a&gt;, I decided it was time to
2196 publish a new release. These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
2197
2198 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:&lt;/p&gt;
2199
2200 &lt;ul&gt;
2201
2202 &lt;li&gt;Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.&lt;/li&gt;
2203 &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.&lt;/li&gt;
2204 &lt;li&gt;Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.&lt;/li&gt;
2205
2206 &lt;/ul&gt;
2207
2208 &lt;p&gt;You can
2209 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
2210 new version 0.16 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;. Please let us know via the Alioth
2211 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
2212 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2213 include a test suite check.&lt;/p&gt;
2214 </description>
2215 </item>
2216
2217 <item>
2218 <title>New chrpath release 0.15</title>
2219 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</link>
2220 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</guid>
2221 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Nov 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2222 <description>&lt;p&gt;After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2223 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2224 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2225 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2226 compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
2227 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2228 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2229 is working on. I checked the
2230 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;,
2231 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath&quot;&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and
2232 &lt;a href=&quot;https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath&quot;&gt;Fedora&lt;/a&gt;
2233 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2234 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2235 These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
2236
2237 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:&lt;/p&gt;
2238
2239 &lt;ul&gt;
2240
2241 &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2242 with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2243 up.&lt;/li&gt;
2244
2245 &lt;li&gt;Updated README with current URLs.&lt;/li&gt;
2246
2247 &lt;li&gt;Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2248 Matthias Klose.&lt;/li&gt;
2249
2250 &lt;li&gt;Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2251 Petr Machata found in Fedora.&lt;/li&gt;
2252
2253 &lt;li&gt;Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2254 .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
2255 Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.&lt;/li&gt;
2256
2257 &lt;/ul&gt;
2258
2259 &lt;p&gt;You can
2260 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
2261 new version 0.15 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;. Please let us know via the Alioth
2262 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
2263 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2264 include a testsuite check.&lt;/p&gt;
2265 </description>
2266 </item>
2267
2268 <item>
2269 <title>Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</title>
2270 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</link>
2271 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</guid>
2272 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Nov 2013 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2273 <description>&lt;p&gt;If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
2274 &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147&quot;&gt;to get rid of huge
2275 init.d scripts&lt;/a&gt;, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
2276 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
2277 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:&lt;/p&gt;
2278
2279 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2280 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
2281 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
2282 # Provides: rsyslog
2283 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
2284 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
2285 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
2286 # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
2287 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6
2288 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
2289 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
2290 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
2291 # used as a drop-in replacement.
2292 ### END INIT INFO
2293 DESC=&quot;enhanced syslogd&quot;
2294 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
2295 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2296
2297 &lt;p&gt;Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
2298 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
2299 info/comments.&lt;/p&gt;
2300
2301 &lt;p&gt;How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
2302 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
2303
2304 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2305 #!/bin/sh
2306
2307 # Define LSB log_* functions.
2308 # Depend on lsb-base (&gt;= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
2309 # and status_of_proc is working.
2310 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
2311
2312 #
2313 # Function that starts the daemon/service
2314
2315 #
2316 do_start()
2317 {
2318 # Return
2319 # 0 if daemon has been started
2320 # 1 if daemon was already running
2321 # 2 if daemon could not be started
2322 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test &gt; /dev/null \
2323 || return 1
2324 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2325 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2326 || return 2
2327 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2328 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2329 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2330 }
2331
2332 #
2333 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2334 #
2335 do_stop()
2336 {
2337 # Return
2338 # 0 if daemon has been stopped
2339 # 1 if daemon was already stopped
2340 # 2 if daemon could not be stopped
2341 # other if a failure occurred
2342 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2343 RETVAL=&quot;$?&quot;
2344 [ &quot;$RETVAL&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
2345 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2346 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2347 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2348 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2349 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
2350 # sleep for some time.
2351 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2352 [ &quot;$?&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
2353 # Many daemons don&#39;t delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2354 rm -f $PIDFILE
2355 return &quot;$RETVAL&quot;
2356 }
2357
2358 #
2359 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2360 #
2361 do_reload() {
2362 #
2363 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
2364 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
2365 # then implement that here.
2366 #
2367 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2368 return 0
2369 }
2370
2371 SCRIPTNAME=$1
2372 scriptbasename=&quot;$(basename $1)&quot;
2373 echo &quot;SN: $scriptbasename&quot;
2374 if [ &quot;$scriptbasename&quot; != &quot;init-d-library&quot; ] ; then
2375 script=&quot;$1&quot;
2376 shift
2377 . $script
2378 else
2379 exit 0
2380 fi
2381
2382 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
2383 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
2384
2385 # Exit if the package is not installed
2386 #[ -x &quot;$DAEMON&quot; ] || exit 0
2387
2388 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
2389 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] &amp;&amp; . /etc/default/$NAME
2390
2391 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
2392 . /lib/init/vars.sh
2393
2394 case &quot;$1&quot; in
2395 start)
2396 [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Starting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
2397 do_start
2398 case &quot;$?&quot; in
2399 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
2400 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
2401 esac
2402 ;;
2403 stop)
2404 [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Stopping $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
2405 do_stop
2406 case &quot;$?&quot; in
2407 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
2408 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
2409 esac
2410 ;;
2411 status)
2412 status_of_proc &quot;$DAEMON&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot; &amp;&amp; exit 0 || exit $?
2413 ;;
2414 #reload|force-reload)
2415 #
2416 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
2417 # and leave &#39;force-reload&#39; as an alias for &#39;restart&#39;.
2418 #
2419 #log_daemon_msg &quot;Reloading $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
2420 #do_reload
2421 #log_end_msg $?
2422 #;;
2423 restart|force-reload)
2424 #
2425 # If the &quot;reload&quot; option is implemented then remove the
2426 # &#39;force-reload&#39; alias
2427 #
2428 log_daemon_msg &quot;Restarting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
2429 do_stop
2430 case &quot;$?&quot; in
2431 0|1)
2432 do_start
2433 case &quot;$?&quot; in
2434 0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
2435 1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
2436 *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
2437 esac
2438 ;;
2439 *)
2440 # Failed to stop
2441 log_end_msg 1
2442 ;;
2443 esac
2444 ;;
2445 *)
2446 echo &quot;Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}&quot; &gt;&amp;2
2447 exit 3
2448 ;;
2449 esac
2450
2451 :
2452 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2453
2454 &lt;p&gt;It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
2455 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
2456 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
2457 optimize it nor make it more robust either.&lt;/p&gt;
2458
2459 &lt;p&gt;A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
2460 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
2461 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
2462 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
2463 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.&lt;/p&gt;
2464 </description>
2465 </item>
2466
2467 <item>
2468 <title>Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</title>
2469 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</link>
2470 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</guid>
2471 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Nov 2013 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2472 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spice-space.org/&quot;&gt;The SPICE protocol&lt;/a&gt; for
2473 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
2474 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
2475 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
2476 missing in Debian. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/668284&quot;&gt;request
2477 for a package&lt;/a&gt; was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
2478 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
2479 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
2480 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
2481 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
2482 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
2483 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
2484
2485 &lt;p&gt;The source is now available from
2486 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&quot;&gt;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2487 </description>
2488 </item>
2489
2490 <item>
2491 <title>Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</title>
2492 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</link>
2493 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</guid>
2494 <pubDate>Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2495 <description>&lt;p&gt;The
2496 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html&quot;&gt;vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;
2497 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
2498 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
2499 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
2500 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
2501 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;, as part
2502 of a plan to simplify the build system for
2503 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;the FreedomBox
2504 project&lt;/a&gt;. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
2505 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
2506 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
2507 Raspberry Pi.&lt;/p&gt;
2508
2509 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the knowledge on how to build &quot;foreign&quot; (aka non-native
2510 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
2511 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
2512 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
2513 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
2514 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html&quot;&gt;Debian
2515 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;. First, the
2516 &lt;tt&gt;--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler&lt;/tt&gt; option tell vmdebootstrap to
2517 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
2518 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
2519 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
2520 two new options &lt;tt&gt;--bootsize size&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;--boottype
2521 fstype&lt;/tt&gt; to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
2522 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
2523 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a &lt;tt&gt;--variant
2524 variant&lt;/tt&gt; option to allow me to create smaller images without the
2525 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
2526 &lt;tt&gt;--no-extlinux&lt;/tt&gt; to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
2527 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
2528 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
2529 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
2530 available from
2531 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/&quot;&gt;the
2532 upstream project page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2533
2534 &lt;p&gt;To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
2535 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
2536 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
2537 list:&lt;/p&gt;
2538
2539 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2540 #!/bin/sh
2541 set -e # Exit on first error
2542 rootdir=&quot;$1&quot;
2543 cd &quot;$rootdir&quot;
2544 cat &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF &gt; etc/apt/sources.list
2545 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
2546 EOF
2547 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
2548 # install a kernel somewhere too.
2549 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
2550 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2551 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2552 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
2553 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
2554 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
2555 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2556
2557 &lt;p&gt;Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
2558 to build the image:&lt;/p&gt;
2559
2560 &lt;pre&gt;
2561 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
2562 --variant minbase \
2563 --arch armel \
2564 --distribution jessie \
2565 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
2566 --image test.img \
2567 --size 600M \
2568 --bootsize 64M \
2569 --boottype vfat \
2570 --log-level debug \
2571 --verbose \
2572 --no-kernel \
2573 --no-extlinux \
2574 --root-password raspberry \
2575 --hostname raspberrypi \
2576 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
2577 --customize `pwd`/customize \
2578 --package netbase \
2579 --package git-core \
2580 --package binutils \
2581 --package ca-certificates \
2582 --package wget \
2583 --package kmod
2584 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2585
2586 &lt;p&gt;The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
2587 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
2588 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
2589 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
2590 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
2591 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
2592 using a non-free binary blob.&lt;/p&gt;
2593
2594 &lt;p&gt;The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
2595 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
2596 build dependency list.&lt;/p&gt;
2597
2598 &lt;p&gt;The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
2599 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
2600 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
2601 than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; based images.&lt;/p&gt;
2602 </description>
2603 </item>
2604
2605 <item>
2606 <title>Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</title>
2607 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</link>
2608 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</guid>
2609 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2610 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
2611 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
2612 these. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2613
2614 &lt;p&gt;Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/&quot;&gt;Debian
2615 Project News for 2013-10-14&lt;/a&gt; I came across the Outreach Program for
2616 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
2617 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
2618 to match &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.ch/opw2013&quot;&gt;any donation done to Debian
2619 earmarked&lt;/a&gt; for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
2620 hope you will to. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2621
2622 &lt;p&gt;And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
2623 create &lt;a href=&quot;https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos&quot;&gt;video
2624 documentaries about the excessive spying&lt;/a&gt; on every Internet user that
2625 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I&#39;ve already
2626 donated. Are you next?&lt;/p&gt;
2627
2628 &lt;p&gt;For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
2629 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
2630 statement under the heading
2631 &lt;a href=&quot;http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/&quot;&gt;Bloggers United for Open
2632 Access&lt;/a&gt; for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
2633 Norwegian government. So far 499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
2634 too.&lt;/p&gt;
2635 </description>
2636 </item>
2637
2638 <item>
2639 <title>Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</title>
2640 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</link>
2641 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</guid>
2642 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
2643 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
2644 project&lt;/a&gt; have been going on for a while, and have presented the
2645 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
2646 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.&lt;/p&gt;
2647
2648 &lt;ul&gt;
2649
2650 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA&quot;&gt;FreedomBox -
2651 2,5 minute marketing film&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2652
2653 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen
2654 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2655
2656 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen -
2657 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
2658 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010&lt;/a&gt;
2659 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2660
2661 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE&quot;&gt;Fosdem 2011
2662 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2663
2664 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s&quot;&gt;Presentation of
2665 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2666
2667 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s&quot;&gt; Freedombox -
2668 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
2669 York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2670
2671 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck&quot;&gt;Introduction
2672 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt;
2673 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2674
2675 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ&quot;&gt;Freedom, Out
2676 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube) &lt;/li&gt;
2677
2678 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
2679 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013&lt;/a&gt; (FOSDEM) &lt;/li&gt;
2680
2681 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg&quot;&gt;What is the
2682 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
2683 2013&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
2684
2685 &lt;/ul&gt;
2686
2687 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is available from
2688 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations&quot;&gt;the
2689 Freedombox Wiki&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2690
2691 &lt;p&gt;On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
2692 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
2693 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
2694 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
2695 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
2696 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
2697 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
2698 us on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC
2699 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
2700 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
2701 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
2702 </description>
2703 </item>
2704
2705 <item>
2706 <title>Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</title>
2707 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</link>
2708 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</guid>
2709 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2710 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was introduced to the
2711 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
2712 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2713 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2714 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
2715 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2716 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
2717 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2718 control over their own basic infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
2719
2720 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2721 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2722 and privilege exercised by the &quot;western&quot; intelligence gathering
2723 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2724 actually started working on the project a while back.&lt;/p&gt;
2725
2726 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/&quot;&gt;initial
2727 Debian initiative&lt;/a&gt; based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2728 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2729 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2730 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
2731 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx&quot;&gt;Dreamplug&lt;/a&gt;,
2732 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
2733 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2734 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
2735 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker&quot;&gt;freedom-maker&lt;/a&gt;
2736 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2737 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2738 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2739 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2740 missing in Debian).&lt;/p&gt;
2741
2742 &lt;p&gt;The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2743 scripts
2744 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;),
2745 and a administrative web interface
2746 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt; + exmachina +
2747 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2748 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;
2749 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2750 client (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat&quot;&gt;jwchat&lt;/a&gt;)
2751 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2752 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd&quot;&gt;ejabberd&lt;/a&gt;). The
2753 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2754 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
2755 this is really working yet, see
2756 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO&quot;&gt;the
2757 project TODO&lt;/a&gt; for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
2758 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2759 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2760 users. I&#39;ve not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2761 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2762 with lots of half baked features.&lt;/p&gt;
2763
2764 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2765 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2766 at.&lt;/p&gt;
2767
2768 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Wheezy amd64&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2769
2770 &lt;ol&gt;
2771
2772 &lt;li&gt;Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.&lt;/li&gt;
2773 &lt;li&gt;Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.&lt;/li&gt;
2774 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2775 to the Debian installer:&lt;p&gt;
2776 &lt;pre&gt;url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2777
2778 &lt;li&gt;Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2779 install on.&lt;/li&gt;
2780
2781 &lt;li&gt;When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2782 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
2783
2784 &lt;/ol&gt;
2785
2786 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raspberry Pi Raspbian&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2787
2788 &lt;ol&gt;
2789
2790 &lt;li&gt;Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.&lt;/li&gt;
2791 &lt;li&gt;Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.&lt;/li&gt;
2792 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:&lt;/p&gt;
2793 &lt;pre&gt;
2794 deb &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox&lt;/a&gt; wheezy main
2795 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2796 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run this as root:&lt;/p&gt;
2797 &lt;pre&gt;
2798 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2799 apt-key add -
2800 apt-get update
2801 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2802 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2803 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2804 &lt;li&gt;Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.&lt;/li&gt;
2805
2806 &lt;/ol&gt;
2807
2808 &lt;p&gt;You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2809 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2810 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2811 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
2812 short &quot;&lt;tt&gt;apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; away. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2813
2814 &lt;p&gt;Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2815 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2816 off the DHCP server by running &quot;&lt;tt&gt;update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2817 disable&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; as root.&lt;/p&gt;
2818
2819 &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2820 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
2821 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;#freedombox&lt;/a&gt; on
2822 irc.debian.org and the
2823 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;project
2824 mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2825
2826 &lt;p&gt;Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2827 &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/&lt;/tt&gt; to see the state of the plint
2828 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2829 get past it), and next visit &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/help/&lt;/tt&gt;
2830 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is &#39;admin&#39; and the
2831 default password is &#39;secret&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
2832 </description>
2833 </item>
2834
2835 <item>
2836 <title>Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</title>
2837 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</link>
2838 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</guid>
2839 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2840 <description>&lt;p&gt;Earlier, I reported about
2841 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html&quot;&gt;my
2842 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk&lt;/a&gt;. Friday I was
2843 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
2844 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2845 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2846 currently on the disk.&lt;/p&gt;
2847
2848 &lt;p&gt;I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2849 &lt;a href=&quot;https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&amp;ProdId=3472&amp;DwnldID=18363&amp;ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&amp;ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&amp;ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&amp;lang=eng&quot;&gt;issdfut_2.0.4.iso&lt;/a&gt;
2850 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2851 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2852 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2853 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
2854 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2855 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
2856 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2857 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
2858 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
2859 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2860 the broken disks.&lt;/p&gt;
2861 </description>
2862 </item>
2863
2864 <item>
2865 <title>How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</title>
2866 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</link>
2867 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</guid>
2868 <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2869 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I switched to
2870 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;my
2871 new laptop&lt;/a&gt;. I&#39;ve previously written about the problems I had with
2872 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2873 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html&quot;&gt;180
2874 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware&lt;/a&gt; that did not handle
2875 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2876 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2877 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2878 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
2879 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2880 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2881 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2882 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2883 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2884 station from now on.&lt;/p&gt;
2885
2886 &lt;p&gt;As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2887 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2888 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
2889 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2890 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2891 package &lt;tt&gt;ssd-setup&lt;/tt&gt; to handle this tuning. The
2892 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git&quot;&gt;source
2893 for the ssd-setup package&lt;/a&gt; is available from collab-maint, and it
2894 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2895 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2896 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2897 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.&lt;/p&gt;
2898
2899 &lt;p&gt;I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2900 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
2901 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2902 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2903 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
2904 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
2905 parameters are tuned:&lt;/p&gt;
2906
2907 &lt;ul&gt;
2908
2909 &lt;li&gt;Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2910 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)&lt;/li&gt;
2911
2912 &lt;li&gt;Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2913 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2914 0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.&lt;/li&gt;
2915
2916 &lt;li&gt;Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2917 systems.&lt;/li&gt;
2918
2919 &lt;li&gt;Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding &#39;discard&#39; to
2920 /etc/fstab.&lt;/li&gt;
2921
2922 &lt;li&gt;Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.&lt;/li&gt;
2923
2924 &lt;li&gt;Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2925 cron.daily).&lt;/li&gt;
2926
2927 &lt;li&gt;Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2928 to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.&lt;/li&gt;
2929
2930 &lt;/ul&gt;
2931
2932 &lt;p&gt;During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2933 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2934 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2935 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2936 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2937 from getting the data on the disk (see
2938 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/538/&quot;&gt;XKCD #538&lt;/a&gt; for an explanation why).
2939 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2940 right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;
2941
2942 &lt;p&gt;I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2943 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2944 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.&lt;/p&gt;
2945
2946 &lt;p&gt;I also considered using the &#39;discard&#39; file system option for ext3
2947 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2948 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2949 instead of during my work.&lt;/p&gt;
2950
2951 &lt;p&gt;My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2952 this is already done by Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
2953
2954 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
2955 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2956 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.&lt;/p&gt;
2957
2958 &lt;p&gt;The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2959 there.&lt;/p&gt;
2960
2961 &lt;p&gt;As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
2962 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
2963 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
2964 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
2965 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
2966 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
2967 back.&lt;/p&gt;
2968 </description>
2969 </item>
2970
2971 <item>
2972 <title>Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</title>
2973 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</link>
2974 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</guid>
2975 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2976 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I wrote about
2977 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;the
2978 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk&lt;/a&gt;, which
2979 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2980 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
2981 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lenovo.com/&quot;&gt;Lenovo&lt;/a&gt;, and they wanted to send a
2982 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
2983 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.&lt;/p&gt;
2984
2985 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2986 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
2987 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
2988 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2989 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2990 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%. But around 60%, the disk
2991 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
2992 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
2993 lock up when I download a new
2994 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ISO or
2995 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2996 the next proposal from Lenovo.&lt;/p&gt;
2997
2998 &lt;p&gt;The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2999 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3000 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3001 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3002 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3003 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
3004
3005 &lt;p&gt;The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3006 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3007 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3008 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3009 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3010 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
3011
3012 &lt;p&gt;The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3013 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
3014 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3015 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3016 exist).&lt;/p&gt;
3017 </description>
3018 </item>
3019
3020 <item>
3021 <title>July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</title>
3022 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</link>
3023 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</guid>
3024 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Jul 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
3025 <description>&lt;p&gt;The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
3026 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3027 party in Oslo. It is organised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the
3028 member assosiation NUUG&lt;/a&gt; and
3029 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3030 project&lt;/a&gt; together with &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitraf.no/&quot;&gt;the hack space
3031 Bitraf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3032
3033 &lt;p&gt;It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
3034 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
3035 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people. Please put your name
3036 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo&quot;&gt;the event
3037 wiki page&lt;/a&gt; if you plan to join us.&lt;/p&gt;
3038 </description>
3039 </item>
3040
3041 <item>
3042 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
3043 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
3044 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
3045 <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3046 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3047 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;replacement
3048 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately I did not have much
3049 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3050 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
3051 ended up picking a
3052 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad X230&lt;/a&gt;
3053 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3054 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
3055 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
3056 on that below.&lt;/p&gt;
3057
3058 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3059 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3060 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
3061 feature at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
3062 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3063 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3064 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3065 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
3066 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.&lt;/p&gt;
3067
3068 &lt;p&gt;So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3069 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3070 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3071 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
3072 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3073 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3074 needed a new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3075
3076 &lt;p&gt;Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
3077 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.&lt;/p&gt;
3078
3079 &lt;p&gt;But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The 180 GB SSD disk
3080 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3081 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3082 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3083 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3084 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
3085 reported to Debian as &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/691427&quot;&gt;BTS
3086 report #691427 2012-10-25&lt;/a&gt; (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3087 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
3088 kernel developers as
3089 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861&quot;&gt;Kernel bugzilla
3090 report #51861 2012-12-20&lt;/a&gt; (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3091 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3092 Lenovo forums, both for
3093 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549&quot;&gt;T430
3094 2012-11-10&lt;/a&gt; and for
3095 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147&quot;&gt;X230
3096 03-20-2013&lt;/a&gt;. The problem do not only affect installation. The
3097 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3098 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3099 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3100 There is even a
3101 &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git&quot;&gt;small C program
3102 available&lt;/a&gt; that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3103 minutes by writing to a file.&lt;/p&gt;
3104
3105 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3106 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3107 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3108 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3109 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
3110 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3111 fixed. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3112 </description>
3113 </item>
3114
3115 <item>
3116 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
3117 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
3118 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
3119 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
3120 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3121 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3122 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
3123 picking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad
3124 X230&lt;/a&gt; with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
3125 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
3126 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3127 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3128 with an expencive door stop.&lt;/p&gt;
3129
3130 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3131 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3132 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
3133 feature at &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
3134 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3135 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3136 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.&lt;/p&gt;
3137
3138 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3139 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3140 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
3141 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3142 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3143 new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3144
3145 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.&lt;/p&gt;
3146 </description>
3147 </item>
3148
3149 <item>
3150 <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
3151 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
3152 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
3153 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3154 <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3155 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3156 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3157 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
3158 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3159 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3160 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
3161 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3162 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3163 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3164 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
3165
3166 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3167 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3168 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3169 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3170 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3171 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3172 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3173 firmware-ipw2x00
3174 firmware-ipw2x00
3175 Preconfiguring packages ...
3176 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3177 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3178 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3179 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3180 #
3181 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3182
3183 &lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3184 printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;
3185
3186 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3187 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3188 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
3189 #
3190 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3191
3192 &lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3193 me some time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3194
3195 &lt;p&gt;So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
3196 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3197 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
3198 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3199 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3200 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
3201 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3202 &lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;. The end result is a slightly better working
3203 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
3204
3205 &lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3206 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3207 finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
3208 #655507&lt;/a&gt;. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3209 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3210 from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
3211 </description>
3212 </item>
3213
3214 <item>
3215 <title>Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</title>
3216 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</link>
3217 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</guid>
3218 <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3219 <description>&lt;p&gt;When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3220 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3221 or on first boot from the hard disk. I&#39;ve seen it once in a while the
3222 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I&#39;ve seen it
3223 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3224 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
3225 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3226 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
3227 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3228 i915 driver used by the
3229 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
3230 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.&lt;/p&gt;
3231
3232 &lt;p&gt;The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
3233 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3234 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3235 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3236 can be done by running these commands as root:&lt;/p&gt;
3237
3238 &lt;pre&gt;
3239 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3240 update-initramfs -u -k all
3241 &lt;/pre&gt;
3242
3243 &lt;p&gt;Since March 2012 there is
3244 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955&quot;&gt;a
3245 mechanism in the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; to tell the i915 driver which
3246 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3247 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
3248 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&quot;&gt;the
3249 intel_quirks array&lt;/a&gt; in the driver source
3250 &lt;tt&gt;drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&lt;/tt&gt; (look for &quot;&lt;tt&gt;static
3251 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;), specifying the PCI device
3252 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3253 number.&lt;/p&gt;
3254
3255 &lt;p&gt;My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from &lt;tt&gt;lspci
3256 -vvnn&lt;/tt&gt; for the video card in question:&lt;/p&gt;
3257
3258 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3259 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
3260 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
3261 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
3262 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
3263 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
3264 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
3265 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast &gt;TAbort- \
3266 &lt;TAbort- &lt;MAbort-&gt;SERR- &lt;PERR- INTx-
3267 Latency: 0
3268 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
3269 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
3270 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
3271 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
3272 Expansion ROM at &lt;unassigned&gt; [disabled]
3273 Capabilities: &lt;access denied&gt;
3274 Kernel driver in use: i915
3275 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3276
3277 &lt;p&gt;The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
3278
3279 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3280 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
3281 ...
3282 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
3283 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
3284 ...
3285 }
3286 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3287
3288 &lt;p&gt;According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
3289 &lt;tt&gt;modinfo i915&lt;/tt&gt;), information about hardware needing the
3290 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
3291 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel&quot;&gt;dri-devel
3292 (at) lists.freedesktop.org&lt;/a&gt; mailing list to reach the kernel
3293 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
3294 yet shown up in
3295 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html&quot;&gt;the
3296 web archive for the mailing list&lt;/a&gt;, so I suspect they do not accept
3297 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
3298 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
3299 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/710938&quot;&gt;BTS report #710938&lt;/a&gt;, to make
3300 sure the patch is not lost.&lt;/p&gt;
3301
3302 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
3303 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
3304 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
3305 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
3306 the screen during login. I&#39;ve reported it to Debian as
3307 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/711237&quot;&gt;BTS report #711237&lt;/a&gt;, and
3308 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
3309 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
3310 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
3311 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
3312 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
3313 you do not know how to update BTS).&lt;/p&gt;
3314
3315 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
3316 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
3317 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
3318 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
3319 backlight.&lt;/p&gt;
3320 </description>
3321 </item>
3322
3323 <item>
3324 <title>How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</title>
3325 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</link>
3326 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</guid>
3327 <pubDate>Mon, 27 May 2013 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
3328 <description>&lt;p&gt;Two days ago, I asked
3329 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html&quot;&gt;how
3330 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
3331 preinstalled with Windows 8&lt;/a&gt;. I found a solution, but am horrified
3332 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
3333 and Windows 8.&lt;/p&gt;
3334
3335 &lt;p&gt;I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
3336 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
3337 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
3338 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
3339 enough to tell.&lt;/p&gt;
3340
3341 &lt;p&gt;There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
3342 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
3343 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
3344 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and
3345 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
3346 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms
3347 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
3348 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
3349 to follow.&lt;/p&gt;
3350
3351 &lt;p&gt;I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
3352 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
3353 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
3354 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is
3355 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
3356 it close to impossible for &quot;normal&quot; users to install Linux without
3357 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
3358 without risking to loose the warranty?&lt;/p&gt;
3359
3360 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve updated the
3361 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Linux Laptop
3362 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, to ensure the next person
3363 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
3364 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
3365
3366 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
3367 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;
3368 </description>
3369 </item>
3370
3371 <item>
3372 <title>How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</title>
3373 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</link>
3374 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</guid>
3375 <pubDate>Sat, 25 May 2013 18:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
3376 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
3377 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
3378 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
3379 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
3380 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
3381 instead of a BIOS to boot.&lt;/p&gt;
3382
3383 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
3384 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
3385 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
3386 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
3387 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
3388 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
3389 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
3390 Windows 8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
3391 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
3392 to get it to boot the Linux installer.&lt;/p&gt;
3393
3394 &lt;p&gt;I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
3395 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
3396 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt; model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
3397 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
3398 page. If I can&#39;t find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
3399 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.&lt;/p&gt;
3400
3401 &lt;p&gt;I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
3402 using UEFI and &quot;secure boot&quot; by making it impossible to install Linux
3403 on new Laptops?&lt;/p&gt;
3404 </description>
3405 </item>
3406
3407 <item>
3408 <title>How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</title>
3409 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</link>
3410 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</guid>
3411 <pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3412 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is
3413 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
3414 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3415 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
3416 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3417 educational software. The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
3418 2001-07-02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3419 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3420 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;please
3421 donate some money&lt;/a&gt;.
3422
3423 &lt;p&gt;A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3424 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3425 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn&#39;t very
3426 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3427 the Debian Edu installer.&lt;/p&gt;
3428
3429 &lt;p&gt;The script,
3430 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup&quot;&gt;debian-edu-bless&lt;a/&gt;
3431 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3432 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3433 into a Debian Edu Workstation:&lt;/p&gt;
3434
3435 &lt;ol&gt;
3436
3437 &lt;li&gt;Add skolelinux related APT sources.&lt;/li&gt;
3438 &lt;li&gt;Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
3439 &lt;li&gt;Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3440 our configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
3441 &lt;li&gt;Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3442 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3443 according to the profile specified in the config above,
3444 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.&lt;/li&gt;
3445 &lt;li&gt;Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3446 that could not be done using preseeding.&lt;/li&gt;
3447 &lt;li&gt;Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.&lt;/li&gt;
3448
3449 &lt;/ol&gt;
3450
3451 &lt;p&gt;There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3452 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3453 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3454 the needed packages.&lt;/p&gt;
3455
3456 &lt;p&gt;The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3457 setting up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspberrypi.org&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt; as a
3458 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3459 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; installation and
3460 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3461 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).&lt;/p&gt;
3462
3463 &lt;p&gt;The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3464 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3465 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:&lt;/p&gt;
3466
3467 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3468 PROFILE=&quot;Roaming-Workstation&quot;
3469 DESKTOP=&quot;lxde&quot;
3470 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3471
3472 &lt;p&gt;The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
3473 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
3474 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
3475 boot.&lt;/p&gt;
3476 </description>
3477 </item>
3478
3479 <item>
3480 <title>Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</title>
3481 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</link>
3482 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</guid>
3483 <pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3484 <description>&lt;P&gt;In January,
3485 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html&quot;&gt;I
3486 announced a&lt;/a&gt; new &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;IRC
3487 channel #debian-lego&lt;/a&gt;, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
3488 community interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lego.com/&quot;&gt;LEGO&lt;/a&gt;, the
3489 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
3490 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;a wiki page&lt;/a&gt; to have
3491 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
3492 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
3493 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
3494 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego&quot;&gt;hardware::hobby:lego&lt;/a&gt;
3495 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
3496 LEGO and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/&quot;&gt;Mindstorms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
3497
3498 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
3499 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos&quot;&gt;brickos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3500 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad&quot;&gt;leocad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;virtual brick CAD software&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3501 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt&quot;&gt;libnxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3502 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd&quot;&gt;lnpd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3503 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc&quot;&gt;nbc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3504 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc&quot;&gt;nqc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3505 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt&quot;&gt;python-nxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3506 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer&quot;&gt;python-nxt-filer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3507 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch&quot;&gt;scratch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3508 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n&quot;&gt;t2n&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple command-line tool for Lego NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3509 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3510
3511 &lt;p&gt;Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
3512 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
3513 available in experimental.&lt;/p&gt;
3514
3515 &lt;p&gt;If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
3516 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
3517 for LEGO designers.&lt;/p&gt;
3518 </description>
3519 </item>
3520
3521 <item>
3522 <title>Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</title>
3523 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</link>
3524 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</guid>
3525 <pubDate>Sun, 5 May 2013 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
3526 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3527 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504&quot;&gt;release announcement
3528 for Debian Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
3529 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3530 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
3531
3532 &lt;p&gt;The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3533 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
3534 &lt;a href=&quot;http://scratch.mit.edu/&quot;&gt;Scratch&lt;/a&gt; program, made famous by
3535 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.code.org/&quot;&gt;Teach kids code&lt;/a&gt; movement, is
3536 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
3537 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/&quot;&gt;kturtle&lt;/a&gt; and
3538 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art&quot;&gt;turtleart&lt;/a&gt;,
3539 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3540 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3541 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3542 Edu.&lt;/a&gt;
3543
3544 &lt;p&gt;And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3545 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
3546 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html&quot;&gt;first
3547 alpha release&lt;/a&gt; went out last week, and the next should soon
3548 follow.&lt;p&gt;
3549 </description>
3550 </item>
3551
3552 <item>
3553 <title>Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</title>
3554 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
3555 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
3556 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Apr 2013 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
3557 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today the &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram
3558 package&lt;/a&gt; finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
3559 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
3560 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.&lt;/p&gt;
3561
3562 &lt;p&gt;Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
3563 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
3564 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
3565 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
3566 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
3567 BTS. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3568 </description>
3569 </item>
3570
3571 <item>
3572 <title>Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</title>
3573 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</link>
3574 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</guid>
3575 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3576 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
3577 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;last
3578 bitcoin related blog post&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the new
3579 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin package&lt;/a&gt; for
3580 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
3581 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
3582 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
3583 version too.&lt;/p&gt;
3584
3585 &lt;p&gt;But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
3586 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
3587 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
3588 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
3589 architectures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/672524&quot;&gt;BTS #672524&lt;/a&gt;).
3590 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
3591 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
3592 failing, please let us know via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
3593
3594 &lt;p&gt;One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
3595 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
3596 if it run short on space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/696715&quot;&gt;BTS
3597 #696715&lt;/a&gt;). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
3598 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3599
3600 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3601 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3602 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3603 </description>
3604 </item>
3605
3606 <item>
3607 <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
3608 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
3609 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
3610 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3611 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
3612 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
3613 for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
3614 pluggable hardware devices, which I
3615 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
3616 out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
3617 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
3618 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
3619 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
3620 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
3621 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
3622 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
3623 repository in Debian. The new name? It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
3624 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;
3625
3626 &lt;pre&gt;
3627 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
3628 cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage -us -uc
3629 &lt;/pre&gt;
3630
3631 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
3632 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
3633 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
3634 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3635
3636 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
3637 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
3638 stuff, in other words. I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
3639 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
3640 word.&lt;/p&gt;
3641
3642 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-26&lt;/strong&gt;: Added -us -us to build
3643 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
3644 process.&lt;/p&gt;
3645
3646 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-27&lt;/strong&gt;: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
3647 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.&lt;/p&gt;
3648 </description>
3649 </item>
3650
3651 <item>
3652 <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
3653 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
3654 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
3655 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3656 <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
3657 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
3658 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;. Now my
3659 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
3660 it, fetch the
3661 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
3662 from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
3663 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
3664 autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;
3665
3666 &lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
3667
3668 &lt;ul&gt;
3669
3670 &lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
3671 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
3672
3673 &lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
3674 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
3675 initially did.&lt;/li&gt;
3676
3677 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
3678 the APT database, a database
3679 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
3680 via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;
3681
3682 &lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
3683 isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
3684 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
3685 package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;
3686
3687 &lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
3688 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;
3689
3690 &lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
3691 package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;
3692
3693 &lt;/ul&gt;
3694
3695 &lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
3696 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
3697 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
3698 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
3699
3700 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
3701 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
3702 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
3703 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
3704 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3705
3706 &lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
3707 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
3708 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
3709 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
3710 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
3711 method. I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
3712 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
3713 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;
3714
3715 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
3716 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
3717 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
3718 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
3719 hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;. If you lack debuild, install the
3720 devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;
3721
3722 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-23 12:00&lt;/strong&gt;: The project is now
3723 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
3724 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
3725 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html&quot;&gt;build
3726 instructions&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;
3727 </description>
3728 </item>
3729
3730 <item>
3731 <title>Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</title>
3732 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</link>
3733 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</guid>
3734 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3735 <description>&lt;p&gt;This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
3736 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
3737 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
3738 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
3739 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
3740 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
3741 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
3742 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
3743 not a durable solution.
3744
3745 &lt;p&gt;My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
3746 got a new one more than 10 years ago. It still holds true.:)&lt;/p&gt;
3747
3748 &lt;ul&gt;
3749
3750 &lt;li&gt;Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
3751 than A4).&lt;/li&gt;
3752 &lt;li&gt;Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.&lt;/li&gt;
3753 &lt;li&gt;Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.&lt;/li&gt;
3754 &lt;li&gt;Long battery life time. Preferable a week.&lt;/li&gt;
3755 &lt;li&gt;Internal WIFI network card.&lt;/li&gt;
3756 &lt;li&gt;Internal Twisted Pair network card.&lt;/li&gt;
3757 &lt;li&gt;Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)&lt;/li&gt;
3758 &lt;li&gt;Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.&lt;/li&gt;
3759 &lt;li&gt;Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12&quot; (A4 paper
3760 size).&lt;/li&gt;
3761 &lt;li&gt;Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
3762 X.org packages.&lt;/li&gt;
3763 &lt;li&gt;Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
3764 the time).
3765
3766 &lt;/ul&gt;
3767
3768 &lt;p&gt;You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
3769 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
3770 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
3771 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
3772 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
3773 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
3774 Lenovo took over. But I&#39;ve been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
3775 still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;
3776
3777 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
3778 external keyboard? I&#39;ll have to check the
3779 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linux-laptop.net/&quot;&gt;Linux Laptops site&lt;/a&gt; for
3780 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
3781 of the vendors listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxpreloaded.com/&quot;&gt;Linux
3782 Pre-loaded site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3783 </description>
3784 </item>
3785
3786 <item>
3787 <title>How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</title>
3788 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</link>
3789 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</guid>
3790 <pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
3791 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
3792 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
3793 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins&quot;&gt;specifications
3794 done by Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
3795 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
3796 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
3797 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:&lt;/p&gt;
3798
3799 &lt;pre&gt;
3800 #!/usr/bin/python
3801 import sys
3802 import apt
3803 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3804 cache = apt.Cache()
3805 cache.open(None)
3806 thepkgs = []
3807 for pkg in cache:
3808 version = pkg.candidate
3809 if version is None:
3810 version = pkg.installed
3811 if version is None:
3812 continue
3813 record = version.record
3814 if not record.has_key(&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;):
3815 continue
3816 mime_types = record[&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;].split(&#39;,&#39;)
3817 for t in mime_types:
3818 t = t.rstrip().strip()
3819 if t == mimetype:
3820 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
3821 return thepkgs
3822 mimetype = &quot;audio/ogg&quot;
3823 if 1 &lt; len(sys.argv):
3824 mimetype = sys.argv[1]
3825 print &quot;Browser plugin packages supporting %s:&quot; % mimetype
3826 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3827 print &quot; %s&quot; %pkg
3828 &lt;/pre&gt;
3829
3830 &lt;p&gt;It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:&lt;/p&gt;
3831
3832 &lt;pre&gt;
3833 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
3834 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
3835 gecko-mediaplayer
3836 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
3837 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
3838 browser-plugin-gnash
3839 %
3840 &lt;/pre&gt;
3841
3842 &lt;p&gt;In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
3843 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
3844 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
3845 anyone working on adding it?&lt;/p&gt;
3846
3847 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-18 14:20&lt;/strong&gt;: The Debian BTS
3848 request for icweasel support for this feature is
3849 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/484010&quot;&gt;#484010&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 (and
3850 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698426&quot;&gt;#698426&lt;/a&gt; from today). Lack
3851 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
3852 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
3853 </description>
3854 </item>
3855
3856 <item>
3857 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</title>
3858 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</link>
3859 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</guid>
3860 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
3861 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal&quot;&gt;DEP-11
3862 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive&lt;/a&gt;, is a
3863 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
3864 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
3865 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
3866 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
3867 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
3868 downloaded by the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
3869
3870 &lt;p&gt;To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
3871 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
3872 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
3873 can be found on the
3874 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest&quot;&gt;Skolelinux FTP
3875 site&lt;/a&gt;. Using the collected information, it become possible to
3876 answer the question in the title. Here are the 20 most supported MIME
3877 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
3878 The complete list is available from the link above.&lt;/p&gt;
3879
3880 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Stable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3881
3882 &lt;pre&gt;
3883 count MIME type
3884 ----- -----------------------
3885 32 text/plain
3886 30 audio/mpeg
3887 29 image/png
3888 28 image/jpeg
3889 27 application/ogg
3890 26 audio/x-mp3
3891 25 image/tiff
3892 25 image/gif
3893 22 image/bmp
3894 22 audio/x-wav
3895 20 audio/x-flac
3896 19 audio/x-mpegurl
3897 18 video/x-ms-asf
3898 18 audio/x-musepack
3899 18 audio/x-mpeg
3900 18 application/x-ogg
3901 17 video/mpeg
3902 17 audio/x-scpls
3903 17 audio/ogg
3904 16 video/x-ms-wmv
3905 &lt;/pre&gt;
3906
3907 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Testing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3908
3909 &lt;pre&gt;
3910 count MIME type
3911 ----- -----------------------
3912 33 text/plain
3913 32 image/png
3914 32 image/jpeg
3915 29 audio/mpeg
3916 27 image/gif
3917 26 image/tiff
3918 26 application/ogg
3919 25 audio/x-mp3
3920 22 image/bmp
3921 21 audio/x-wav
3922 19 audio/x-mpegurl
3923 19 audio/x-mpeg
3924 18 video/mpeg
3925 18 audio/x-scpls
3926 18 audio/x-flac
3927 18 application/x-ogg
3928 17 video/x-ms-asf
3929 17 text/html
3930 17 audio/x-musepack
3931 16 image/x-xbitmap
3932 &lt;/pre&gt;
3933
3934 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3935
3936 &lt;pre&gt;
3937 count MIME type
3938 ----- -----------------------
3939 31 text/plain
3940 31 image/png
3941 31 image/jpeg
3942 29 audio/mpeg
3943 28 application/ogg
3944 27 image/gif
3945 26 image/tiff
3946 26 audio/x-mp3
3947 23 audio/x-wav
3948 22 image/bmp
3949 21 audio/x-flac
3950 20 audio/x-mpegurl
3951 19 audio/x-mpeg
3952 18 video/x-ms-asf
3953 18 video/mpeg
3954 18 audio/x-scpls
3955 18 application/x-ogg
3956 17 audio/x-musepack
3957 16 video/x-ms-wmv
3958 16 video/x-msvideo
3959 &lt;/pre&gt;
3960
3961 &lt;p&gt;I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
3962 information mentioned in DEP-11. I have not yet had time to look at
3963 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
3964 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
3965
3966 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-16 13:35&lt;/strong&gt;: Updated numbers after
3967 discovering a typo in my script.&lt;/p&gt;
3968 </description>
3969 </item>
3970
3971 <item>
3972 <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
3973 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
3974 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
3975 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3976 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
3977 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
3978 values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
3979 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
3980 dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
3981 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
3982 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
3983 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
3984 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
3985 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
3986
3987 &lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
3988 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
3989 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
3990 modalias.&lt;/p&gt;
3991
3992 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3993 Package: package-name
3994 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
3995 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3996
3997 &lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
3998 for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;
3999
4000 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
4001 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;
4002
4003 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4004 Package: cheese
4005 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
4006 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4007
4008 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
4009 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;
4010
4011 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4012 Package: pcmciautils
4013 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
4014 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4015
4016 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
4017 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;
4018
4019 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4020 Package: colorhug-client
4021 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
4022 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4023
4024 &lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
4025 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
4026 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
4027
4028 &lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
4029 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
4030 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
4031 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
4032 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I&#39;ve
4033 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
4034 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
4035 Raring.&lt;/p&gt;
4036
4037 &lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
4038 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
4039 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
4040 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
4041 try the
4042 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
4043 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
4044 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
4045 repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;
4046
4047 &lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
4048 install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;
4049
4050 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4051 % ./hw-support-lookup
4052 &lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
4053 &lt;br&gt;%
4054 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4055
4056 &lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
4057 propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;
4058
4059 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4060 % ./hw-support-lookup
4061 &lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
4062 &lt;br&gt;%
4063 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4064
4065 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
4066 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
4067 database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;
4068
4069 &lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
4070 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
4071 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
4072 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
4073 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
4074 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
4075 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
4076 see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;
4077
4078 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4079 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4080 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4081 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4082 </description>
4083 </item>
4084
4085 <item>
4086 <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
4087 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
4088 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
4089 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
4090 <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
4091 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
4092 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
4093 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
4094 in
4095 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
4096 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:
4097
4098 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4099
4100 &lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
4101 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
4102 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
4103 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
4104 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
4105 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.
4106
4107 &lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
4108 this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
4109
4110 &lt;pre&gt;
4111 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
4112 &lt;/pre&gt;
4113
4114 &lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
4115 using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;
4116
4117 &lt;pre&gt;
4118 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
4119 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
4120 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
4121 %
4122 &lt;/pre&gt;
4123
4124 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4125
4126 &lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
4127 Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;
4128
4129 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4130 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
4131 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4132
4133 &lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;
4134
4135 &lt;pre&gt;
4136 v 00008086 (vendor)
4137 d 00002770 (device)
4138 sv 00001028 (subvendor)
4139 sd 000001AD (subdevice)
4140 bc 06 (bus class)
4141 sc 00 (bus subclass)
4142 i 00 (interface)
4143 &lt;/pre&gt;
4144
4145 &lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
4146 -n&#39; as 8086:2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
4147 0600. The 0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
4148 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;
4149
4150 &lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
4151 means.&lt;/p&gt;
4152
4153 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4154
4155 &lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
4156 USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
4157
4158 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4159 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
4160 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4161
4162 &lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;
4163
4164 &lt;pre&gt;
4165 v 1D6B (device vendor)
4166 p 0001 (device product)
4167 d 0206 (bcddevice)
4168 dc 09 (device class)
4169 dsc 00 (device subclass)
4170 dp 00 (device protocol)
4171 ic 09 (interface class)
4172 isc 00 (interface subclass)
4173 ip 00 (interface protocol)
4174 &lt;/pre&gt;
4175
4176 &lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
4177 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
4178 these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;
4179
4180 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4181 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
4182 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
4183 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
4184 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
4185 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4186
4187 &lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
4188 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
4189 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;
4190
4191 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4192
4193 &lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
4194 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;
4195
4196 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4197 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4198 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4199
4200 &lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;
4201
4202 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4203
4204 &lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
4205 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
4206 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;
4207
4208 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4209 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
4210 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4211
4212 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
4213
4214 &lt;pre&gt;
4215 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
4216 bvr 1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
4217 bd 06/15/2005 (BIOS date)
4218 svn IBM (system vendor)
4219 pn 2371H4G (product name)
4220 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
4221 rvn IBM (board vendor)
4222 rn 2371H4G (board name)
4223 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
4224 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
4225 ct 10 (chassis type)
4226 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
4227 &lt;/pre&gt;
4228
4229 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
4230 found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;
4231
4232 &lt;pre&gt;
4233 3 Desktop
4234 4 Low Profile Desktop
4235 5 Pizza Box
4236 6 Mini Tower
4237 7 Tower
4238 8 Portable
4239 9 Laptop
4240 10 Notebook
4241 11 Hand Held
4242 12 Docking Station
4243 13 All In One
4244 14 Sub Notebook
4245 15 Space-saving
4246 16 Lunch Box
4247 17 Main Server Chassis
4248 18 Expansion Chassis
4249 19 Sub Chassis
4250 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
4251 21 Peripheral Chassis
4252 22 RAID Chassis
4253 23 Rack Mount Chassis
4254 24 Sealed-case PC
4255 25 Multi-system
4256 26 CompactPCI
4257 27 AdvancedTCA
4258 28 Blade
4259 29 Blade Enclosing
4260 &lt;/pre&gt;
4261
4262 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
4263 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
4264 claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;
4265
4266 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4267
4268 &lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
4269 test machine:&lt;/p&gt;
4270
4271 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4272 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
4273 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4274
4275 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
4276
4277 &lt;pre&gt;
4278 ty 01 (type)
4279 pr 00 (prototype)
4280 id 00 (id)
4281 ex 00 (extra)
4282 &lt;/pre&gt;
4283
4284 &lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
4285 the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;
4286
4287 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4288
4289 &lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
4290 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
4291 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
4292 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
4293 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
4294 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
4295 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;
4296
4297 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4298
4299 &lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
4300 one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
4301
4302 &lt;pre&gt;
4303 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
4304 echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
4305 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/ /&#39; ; \
4306 done
4307 &lt;/pre&gt;
4308
4309 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
4310 list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;
4311
4312 &lt;pre&gt;
4313 acpi:ACPI0003:
4314 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
4315 acpi:device:
4316 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
4317 acpi:IBM0068:
4318 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
4319 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
4320 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
4321 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
4322 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4323 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
4324 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
4325 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
4326 [...]
4327 &lt;/pre&gt;
4328
4329 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4330 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4331 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4332 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4333
4334 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
4335 &quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
4336 in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
4337 </description>
4338 </item>
4339
4340 <item>
4341 <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
4342 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
4343 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
4344 <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
4345 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
4346 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
4347 Launcher and updated the Debian package
4348 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
4349 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
4350 also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
4351 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
4352 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
4353 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
4354 contribute. &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
4355 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
4356 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
4357 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
4358 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
4359 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
4360 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
4361 view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
4362 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
4363 </description>
4364 </item>
4365
4366 <item>
4367 <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
4368 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
4369 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
4370 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
4371 <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
4372 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
4373 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
4374 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
4375 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
4376 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
4377 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
4378 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
4379 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
4380 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
4381 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;
4382
4383 &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
4384 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
4385 the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;. The idea is fairly
4386 simple:
4387
4388 &lt;ul&gt;
4389
4390 &lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
4391 starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
4392
4393 &lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
4394 hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;
4395
4396 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
4397 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
4398 packages.&lt;/li&gt;
4399
4400 &lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
4401 package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;
4402
4403 &lt;/ul&gt;
4404
4405 &lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
4406 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
4407 discover database to find packages and
4408 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
4409 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
4410
4411 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
4412 draft package is now checked into
4413 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
4414 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;. In the process, I updated the
4415 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
4416 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
4417 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
4418 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
4419 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
4420 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
4421 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
4422 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
4423 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
4424 because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;
4425
4426 &lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
4427 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
4428 inserted):&lt;/p&gt;
4429
4430 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4431
4432 &lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
4433 install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
4434 program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;
4435
4436 &lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
4437 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
4438 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
4439 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
4440 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
4441 reportbug if it isn&#39;t. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
4442 such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
4443
4444 &lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
4445 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
4446 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
4447 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
4448 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
4449 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
4450 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
4451 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
4452 not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;
4453
4454 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
4455 please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4456 </description>
4457 </item>
4458
4459 <item>
4460 <title>New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</title>
4461 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</link>
4462 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</guid>
4463 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
4464 <description>&lt;p&gt;During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
4465 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;LEGO Mindstorm
4466 NXT&lt;/a&gt;. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
4467 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
4468 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
4469 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
4470 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; (server
4471 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
4472 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
4473 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4474
4475 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-03: A
4476 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;project page&lt;/a&gt;
4477 including links to Lego related packages is now available.&lt;/p&gt;
4478 </description>
4479 </item>
4480
4481 <item>
4482 <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
4483 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
4484 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
4485 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
4486 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
4487 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;
4488
4489 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
4490 decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
4491 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
4492 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
4493 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
4494 The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
4495 package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
4496 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
4497 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
4498 name.&lt;/p&gt;
4499
4500 &lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
4501 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
4502 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;
4503
4504 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4505 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
4506 cd bitcoin
4507 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
4508 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
4509 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4510
4511 &lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
4512 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
4513 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
4514 client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
4515 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
4516 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
4517 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
4518 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
4519 not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;
4520
4521 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4522 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4523 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4524 </description>
4525 </item>
4526
4527 <item>
4528 <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
4529 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
4530 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
4531 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
4532 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
4533 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
4534 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
4535 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
4536 state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
4537 Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
4538 is now maintained by a
4539 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
4540 people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
4541 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
4542 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
4543 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
4544 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
4545 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
4546 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
4547 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
4548 Corallo in a
4549 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
4550 Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
4551 Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
4552
4553 &lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
4554 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
4555 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
4556 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
4557 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
4558 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
4559 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
4560 patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
4561 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
4562 new version to unstable.
4563
4564 &lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
4565 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
4566 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
4567 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
4568 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
4569 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
4570 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
4571 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
4572 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
4573 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
4574 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
4575 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
4576 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
4577 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
4578 have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;
4579
4580 &lt;p&gt;My
4581 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
4582 with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
4583 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
4584 years ago, as can be
4585 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
4586 on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;. Thank you everyone for your
4587 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
4588 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
4589 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
4590 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
4591 the same address as last time,
4592 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4593 </description>
4594 </item>
4595
4596 <item>
4597 <title>Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</title>
4598 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
4599 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
4600 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4601 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I
4602 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html&quot;&gt;mentioned
4603 this summer&lt;/a&gt;, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
4604 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
4605 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook&quot;&gt;Gitorious
4606 repository for the project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4607
4608 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
4609 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
4610 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
4611 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.&lt;/p&gt;
4612
4613 &lt;p&gt;Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
4614 PostScript formats at
4615 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s Computer
4616 Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4617 </description>
4618 </item>
4619
4620 <item>
4621 <title>Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</title>
4622 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</link>
4623 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</guid>
4624 <pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4625 <description>&lt;p&gt;I dag fyller
4626 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813&quot;&gt;Debian-prosjektet 19
4627 år&lt;/a&gt;. Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
4628 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!&lt;/p&gt;
4629 </description>
4630 </item>
4631
4632 <item>
4633 <title>Song book for Computer Scientists</title>
4634 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
4635 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
4636 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4637 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
4638 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uit.no/&quot;&gt;University of Tromsø&lt;/a&gt;, I started
4639 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
4640 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
4641 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
4642 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
4643 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
4644 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
4645 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
4646 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
4647 missing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;
4648
4649 &lt;p&gt;I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
4650 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
4651 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
4652 Especially now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://debconf12.debconf.org/&quot;&gt;Debconf
4653 12&lt;/a&gt; is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
4654 out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s
4655 Computer Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.
4656 </description>
4657 </item>
4658
4659 <item>
4660 <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
4661 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
4662 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
4663 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
4664 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
4665 around 1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
4666 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
4667 up to date. If the firmware isn&#39;t the latest and greatest, the
4668 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
4669 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
4670 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
4671 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
4672 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
4673 the tools to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
4674
4675 &lt;p&gt;To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
4676 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
4677 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
4678 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.&lt;/P&gt;
4679
4680 &lt;p&gt;On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
4681 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&quot;&gt;an XML file&lt;/a&gt;
4682 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
4683 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
4684 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
4685 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
4686 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
4687 be activated on the first reboot.&lt;/p&gt;
4688
4689 &lt;p&gt;This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
4690 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
4691 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.&lt;/p&gt;
4692
4693 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4694 #!/usr/bin/perl
4695 use strict;
4696 use warnings;
4697 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
4698 BEGIN {
4699 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
4700 my %rhelmodules = (
4701 &#39;XML::Simple&#39; =&gt; &#39;perl-XML-Simple&#39;,
4702 );
4703 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
4704 eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
4705 if ($@) {
4706 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
4707 system(&quot;yum install -y $pkg&quot;);
4708 eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
4709 }
4710 }
4711 }
4712 my $errorsto = &#39;pere@hungry.com&#39;;
4713
4714 upgrade_dell();
4715
4716 exit 0;
4717
4718 sub run_firmware_script {
4719 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
4720 unless ($script) {
4721 print STDERR &quot;fail: missing script name\n&quot;;
4722 exit 1
4723 }
4724 print STDERR &quot;Running $script\n\n&quot;;
4725
4726 if (0 == system(&quot;sh $script $opts&quot;)) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
4727 print STDERR &quot;success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n&quot;;
4728 } else {
4729 print STDERR &quot;fail: firmware script returned error\n&quot;;
4730 }
4731 }
4732
4733 sub run_firmware_scripts {
4734 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
4735 # Run firmware packages
4736 for my $dir (@dirs) {
4737 print STDERR &quot;info: Running scripts in $dir\n&quot;;
4738 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die &quot;Unable to open directory $dir: $!&quot;;
4739 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
4740 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
4741 run_firmware_script($opts, &quot;$dir/$s&quot;);
4742 }
4743 closedir $dh;
4744 }
4745 }
4746
4747 sub download {
4748 my $url = shift;
4749 print STDERR &quot;info: Downloading $url\n&quot;;
4750 system(&quot;wget --quiet \&quot;$url\&quot;&quot;);
4751 }
4752
4753 sub upgrade_dell {
4754 my @dirs;
4755 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4756 chomp $product;
4757
4758 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
4759
4760 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
4761 system(&#39;yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail&#39;);
4762
4763 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
4764 CLEANUP =&gt; 1
4765 );
4766 chdir($tmpdir);
4767 fetch_dell_fw(&#39;catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
4768 system(&#39;gunzip Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
4769 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list(&#39;Catalog.xml&#39;);
4770 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
4771 my $fwopts = &quot;-q&quot;;
4772 if (@paths) {
4773 for my $url (@paths) {
4774 fetch_dell_fw($url);
4775 }
4776 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
4777 } else {
4778 print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
4779 print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
4780 }
4781 chdir(&#39;/&#39;);
4782 } else {
4783 print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
4784 print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
4785 }
4786 }
4787
4788 sub fetch_dell_fw {
4789 my $path = shift;
4790 my $url = &quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path&quot;;
4791 download($url);
4792 }
4793
4794 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
4795 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
4796 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
4797 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
4798 my $filename = shift;
4799
4800 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4801 chomp $product;
4802 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
4803
4804 print STDERR &quot;Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n&quot;;
4805
4806 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
4807 my @paths;
4808 for my $bundle (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareBundle}}) {
4809 my $brand = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
4810 my $model = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Model}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
4811 my $oscode;
4812 if (&quot;ARRAY&quot; eq ref $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}) {
4813 $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}[0]-&gt;{osCode};
4814 } else {
4815 $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}-&gt;{osCode};
4816 }
4817 if ($mybrand eq $brand &amp;&amp; $mymodel eq $model &amp;&amp; &quot;LIN&quot; eq $oscode)
4818 {
4819 @paths = map { $_-&gt;{path} } @{$bundle-&gt;{Contents}-&gt;{Package}};
4820 }
4821 }
4822 for my $component (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareComponent}}) {
4823 my $componenttype = $component-&gt;{ComponentType}-&gt;{value};
4824
4825 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
4826 next if &#39;APAC&#39; eq $componenttype;
4827
4828 my $cpath = $component-&gt;{path};
4829 for my $path (@paths) {
4830 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
4831 push(@paths, $cpath);
4832 }
4833 }
4834 }
4835 return @paths;
4836 }
4837 &lt;/pre&gt;
4838
4839 &lt;p&gt;The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
4840 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
4841 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
4842 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
4843 outdated.&lt;/p&gt;
4844 </description>
4845 </item>
4846
4847 <item>
4848 <title>How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</title>
4849 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</link>
4850 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</guid>
4851 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Aug 2011 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
4852 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wouter Verhelst have some
4853 &lt;a href=&quot;http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot&quot;&gt;interesting
4854 comments and opinions&lt;/a&gt; on my blog post on
4855 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html&quot;&gt;the
4856 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian&lt;/a&gt; and my blog post about
4857 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html&quot;&gt;the
4858 default KDE desktop in Debian&lt;/a&gt;. I only have time to address one
4859 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4860 misunderstanding he bring forward:&lt;/p&gt;
4861
4862 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4863 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4864 single-user system (by adding &#39;single&#39; to the kernel command line;
4865 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4866 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4867
4868 &lt;p&gt;This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4869 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same. I am not surprised he
4870 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4871 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4872 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn&#39;t the same as single user
4873 mode. I&#39;ll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
4874 hard to explain.&lt;/p&gt;
4875
4876 &lt;p&gt;Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
4877 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. This means the only thing that is
4878 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
4879 state &quot;between&quot; the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
4880 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
4881 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
4882 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
4883 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
4884 runs &quot;init -t1 S&quot; to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
4885 1. It is confusing that the &#39;S&#39; (single user) init mode is not the
4886 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
4887 mode).&lt;/p&gt;
4888
4889 &lt;p&gt;This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
4890 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
4891 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. When booting into
4892 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc
4893 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. A problem show up when
4894 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
4895 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
4896 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
4897 after visiting single user mode.&lt;/p&gt;
4898
4899 &lt;p&gt;A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
4900 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
4901 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
4902 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
4903 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
4904 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
4905 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to get a
4906 functioning single user mode during boot.&lt;/p&gt;
4907
4908 &lt;p&gt;I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
4909 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
4910 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;
4911 </description>
4912 </item>
4913
4914 <item>
4915 <title>What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</title>
4916 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</link>
4917 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</guid>
4918 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4919 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
4920 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
4921 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
4922 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
4923 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
4924 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
4925 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
4926 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
4927 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
4928 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
4929 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
4930 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
4931 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.&lt;/p&gt;
4932
4933 &lt;p&gt;So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
4934 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
4935 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
4936 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
4937 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
4938 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
4939 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
4940 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
4941 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.&lt;/p&gt;
4942
4943 &lt;p&gt;Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
4944 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
4945 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
4946 is presented.&lt;/p&gt;
4947
4948 &lt;p&gt;As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
4949 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
4950 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
4951 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
4952 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4953 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4954 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4955 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
4956 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4957 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4958 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4959 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
4960 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4961 find time to push this forward.&lt;/p&gt;
4962 </description>
4963 </item>
4964
4965 <item>
4966 <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
4967 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
4968 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
4969 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
4970 <description>&lt;p&gt;While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
4971 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
4972 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
4973 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
4974 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
4975
4976 &lt;p&gt;I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
4977 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
4978 do this in Debian we would have a source.&lt;/p&gt;
4979
4980 &lt;ol&gt;
4981
4982 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.&lt;/strong&gt; When there
4983 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
4984 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
4985 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
4986 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
4987 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
4988 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
4989 Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
4990
4991 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
4992 plugins.&lt;/strong&gt; When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
4993 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
4994 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
4995 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
4996 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
4997 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
4998 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
4999 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
5000 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
5001 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
5002 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
5003 not the browser for any missing features.&lt;/li&gt;
5004
5005 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
5006 handlers.&lt;/strong&gt; When the media players encounter a format or codec
5007 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
5008 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
5009 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
5010 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
5011 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
5012 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
5013 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
5014 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.&lt;/li&gt;
5015
5016 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better browser handling of some MIME types.&lt;/strong&gt; When
5017 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
5018 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
5019 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
5020 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
5021 latter behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;
5022
5023 &lt;/ol&gt;
5024
5025 &lt;p&gt;There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
5026 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
5027 it do not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
5028
5029 &lt;p&gt;I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
5030 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
5031 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;
5032 </description>
5033 </item>
5034
5035 <item>
5036 <title>Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</title>
5037 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
5038 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
5039 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
5040 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/A&gt;
5041 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
5042 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
5043 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
5044 security support for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;
5045
5046 &lt;p&gt;The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
5047 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
5048 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
5049 their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; clone
5050 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
5051 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn&#39;t very long, and I hope the perl group
5052 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
5053 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
5054 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
5055 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
5056 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
5057 easier in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
5058
5059 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
5060 installed on my server was a simple call to &#39;cpan2deb Module::Name&#39;
5061 and &#39;dpkg -i&#39; to install the resulting package. But this leave me
5062 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
5063 do not have time for.&lt;/p&gt;
5064 </description>
5065 </item>
5066
5067 <item>
5068 <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
5069 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
5070 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
5071 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5072 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
5073 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
5074 update in English.&lt;/p&gt;
5075
5076 &lt;p&gt;The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
5077 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
5078 of the British service
5079 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; up and running,
5080 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
5081 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
5082 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
5083 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt; on what to develop,
5084 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
5085 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
5086 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
5087 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
5088 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is using
5089 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; as the map
5090 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
5091 support for this had to be added/fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
5092
5093 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
5094 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
5095 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
5096 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
5097 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
5098 public infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
5099
5100 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
5101 such service?&lt;/p&gt;
5102 </description>
5103 </item>
5104
5105 <item>
5106 <title>Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</title>
5107 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</link>
5108 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</guid>
5109 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
5110 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
5111 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
5112 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
5113 available on the Internet, and check our locally
5114 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
5115 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
5116 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
5117 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
5118 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
5119 out which security holes were present in our free software
5120 collection.&lt;/p&gt;
5121
5122 &lt;p&gt;After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
5123 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
5124 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
5125 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
5126 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
5127 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
5128 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
5129 solution. Enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html&quot;&gt;Common
5130 Platform Enumeration&lt;/a&gt; dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
5131 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
5132 mapped to CVEs in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National
5133 Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, allowing me to look up know security
5134 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
5135 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
5136 This is fairly trivial (I google for &#39;cve cpe $package&#39; and check the
5137 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).&lt;/p&gt;
5138
5139 &lt;p&gt;To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
5140 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
5141 check out, one could look up
5142 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3&quot;&gt;cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
5143 in NVD&lt;/a&gt; and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
5144 The most recent one is
5145 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001&quot;&gt;CVE-2010-0001&lt;/a&gt;,
5146 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
5147 list of affected versions is provided.&lt;/p&gt;
5148
5149 &lt;p&gt;The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
5150 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I&#39;ve written a
5151 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
5152 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
5153 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
5154 security issues out.&lt;/p&gt;
5155
5156 &lt;p&gt;Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
5157 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
5158 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
5159 RHEL is providing
5160 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt&quot;&gt;a
5161 map from CVE to CPE&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that they are using the CPE
5162 information. I&#39;m not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;
5163
5164 &lt;p&gt;To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
5165 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
5166 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
5167 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
5168 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
5169 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
5170 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
5171 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
5172 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
5173 established soon.&lt;/p&gt;
5174
5175 &lt;p&gt;An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
5176 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
5177 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
5178 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
5179 for their packages.&lt;/p&gt;
5180 </description>
5181 </item>
5182
5183 <item>
5184 <title>Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</title>
5185 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</link>
5186 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</guid>
5187 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
5188 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the
5189 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
5190 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
5191 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
5192 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
5193 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
5194 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
5195 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
5196 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
5197 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3&gt;&amp;1&lt;/tt&gt;. The relevant output on
5198 one of my machines like this:&lt;/p&gt;
5199
5200 &lt;pre&gt;
5201 loaded modules:
5202 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
5203 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
5204 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
5205 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
5206 10de:03ec pata_amd
5207 10de:03f6 sata_nv
5208 1022:1103 k8temp
5209 109e:036e bttv
5210 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
5211 11ab:4364 sky2
5212 &lt;/pre&gt;
5213
5214 &lt;p&gt;The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
5215 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:&lt;/p&gt;
5216
5217 &lt;pre&gt;
5218 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
5219 echo loaded pci modules:
5220 (
5221 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
5222 for address in * ; do
5223 if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
5224 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5225 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
5226 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5227 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $3}&#39;`
5228 echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
5229 fi
5230 fi
5231 done
5232 )
5233 echo
5234 fi
5235 &lt;/pre&gt;
5236
5237 &lt;p&gt;Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
5238 mappings:&lt;/p&gt;
5239
5240 &lt;pre&gt;
5241 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
5242 echo loaded usb modules:
5243 (
5244 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
5245 for address in * ; do
5246 if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
5247 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5248 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
5249 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5250 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $6}&#39;)
5251 if [ &quot;$id&quot; ] ; then
5252 echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
5253 fi
5254 fi
5255 fi
5256 done
5257 )
5258 echo
5259 fi
5260 &lt;/pre&gt;
5261
5262 &lt;p&gt;This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
5263 well.&lt;/p&gt;
5264 </description>
5265 </item>
5266
5267 <item>
5268 <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
5269 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
5270 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
5271 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
5272 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent at work here at the &lt;a
5273 href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; testing if the new
5274 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
5275 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5276 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
5277 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
5278 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5279 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5280 university.&lt;/p&gt;
5281
5282 &lt;p&gt;My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5283 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
5284 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5285 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
5286 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5287 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5288 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5289 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.&lt;/p&gt;
5290
5291 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
5292 I perform on a new model.&lt;/p&gt;
5293
5294 &lt;ul&gt;
5295
5296 &lt;li&gt;Is PXE installation working? I&#39;m testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5297 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
5298 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.&lt;/li&gt;
5299
5300 &lt;li&gt;Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
5301 installation, X.org is working.&lt;/li&gt;
5302
5303 &lt;li&gt;Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
5304 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5305 reported by the program.&lt;/li&gt;
5306
5307 &lt;li&gt;Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5308 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
5309 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5310 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
5311 normally test this by playing
5312 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ &quot;&gt;a HTML5
5313 video&lt;/a&gt; in Firefox/Iceweasel.&lt;/li&gt;
5314
5315 &lt;li&gt;Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
5316 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
5317
5318 &lt;li&gt;Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5319 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
5320
5321 &lt;li&gt;Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
5322 picture from the v4l device show up.&lt;/li&gt;
5323
5324 &lt;li&gt;Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5325 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
5326 few.&lt;/li&gt;
5327
5328 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
5329 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5330 notice this.&lt;/li&gt;
5331
5332 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I&#39;m testing if the
5333 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5334 resume.&lt;/li&gt;
5335
5336 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5337 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5338 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
5339 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5340 not.&lt;/li&gt;
5341
5342 &lt;li&gt;Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5343 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5344 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5345 existence.&lt;/li&gt;
5346
5347 &lt;/ul&gt;
5348
5349 &lt;p&gt;By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5350 for the HP machines I am testing. I&#39;m not done yet, so I will report
5351 the test results later. For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
5352 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5353 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p. As you
5354 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
5355 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5356 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.&lt;/p&gt;
5357 </description>
5358 </item>
5359
5360 <item>
5361 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
5362 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
5363 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
5364 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
5365 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
5366 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
5367 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5368 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
5369
5370 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5371 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5372 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5373 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5374 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5375 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
5376 all transactions. There I can see that my address
5377 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
5378 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
5379 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
5380 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
5381 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
5382 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
5383 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5384 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5385 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5386 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I&#39;m told
5387 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5388 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
5389 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
5390
5391 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
5392 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
5393 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
5394 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
5395 If the Skolelinux foundation
5396 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
5397 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
5398 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
5399 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
5400 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
5401 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
5402 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
5403 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
5404
5405 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
5406 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
5407 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
5408 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
5409 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
5410 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
5411 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
5412 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
5413 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
5414 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
5415 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I&#39;m sure they
5416 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
5417 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
5418 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
5419 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
5420
5421 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
5422 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
5423 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
5424 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
5425 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
5426 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
5427 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
5428 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
5429 BitCoins. Check out
5430 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
5431 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
5432 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
5433 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
5434 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
5435
5436 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
5437 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
5438 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
5439 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
5440 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
5441 </description>
5442 </item>
5443
5444 <item>
5445 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
5446 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
5447 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
5448 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
5449 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
5450 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
5451 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
5452 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
5453 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5454 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5455 A blog post from
5456 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
5457 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
5458 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
5459 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;. I got
5460 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5461 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5462 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
5463
5464 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
5465 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5466 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5467 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5468 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
5469 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
5470 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5471 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
5472 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
5473 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
5474
5475 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5476 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
5477 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
5478 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
5479 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
5480 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5481 you can even get
5482 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
5483 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
5484 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
5485 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
5486
5487 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5488 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5489 donations to the address
5490 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
5491 </description>
5492 </item>
5493
5494 <item>
5495 <title>Why isn&#39;t Debian Edu using VLC?</title>
5496 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</link>
5497 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</guid>
5498 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
5499 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
5500 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
5501 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
5502 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
5503 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
5504 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
5505 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
5506 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.&lt;p&gt;
5507
5508 &lt;p&gt;But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
5509 mplayer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
5510 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
5511 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
5512 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
5513 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
5514 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;last
5515 tested the browser plugins&lt;/a&gt; available in Debian, the VLC plugin
5516 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
5517 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
5518 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.&lt;/P&gt;
5519
5520 &lt;p&gt;While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
5521 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
5522 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
5523 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
5524 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
5525 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
5526 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
5527 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
5528 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
5529 what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;
5530 </description>
5531 </item>
5532
5533 <item>
5534 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</title>
5535 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</link>
5536 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</guid>
5537 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
5538 <description>&lt;p&gt;Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
5539 upgrade testing of the
5540 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
5541 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt; to do &lt;tt&gt;apt-get autoremove&lt;/tt&gt; when using apt-get.
5542 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
5543 can now present the updated result from today:&lt;/p&gt;
5544
5545 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
5546
5547 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5548
5549 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5550 apache2.2-bin
5551 aptdaemon
5552 baobab
5553 binfmt-support
5554 browser-plugin-gnash
5555 cheese-common
5556 cli-common
5557 cups-pk-helper
5558 dmz-cursor-theme
5559 empathy
5560 empathy-common
5561 freedesktop-sound-theme
5562 freeglut3
5563 gconf-defaults-service
5564 gdm-themes
5565 gedit-plugins
5566 geoclue
5567 geoclue-hostip
5568 geoclue-localnet
5569 geoclue-manual
5570 geoclue-yahoo
5571 gnash
5572 gnash-common
5573 gnome
5574 gnome-backgrounds
5575 gnome-cards-data
5576 gnome-codec-install
5577 gnome-core
5578 gnome-desktop-environment
5579 gnome-disk-utility
5580 gnome-screenshot
5581 gnome-search-tool
5582 gnome-session-canberra
5583 gnome-system-log
5584 gnome-themes-extras
5585 gnome-themes-more
5586 gnome-user-share
5587 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5588 gstreamer0.10-tools
5589 gtk2-engines
5590 gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5591 gtk2-engines-smooth
5592 hamster-applet
5593 libapache2-mod-dnssd
5594 libapr1
5595 libaprutil1
5596 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
5597 libaprutil1-ldap
5598 libart2.0-cil
5599 libboost-date-time1.42.0
5600 libboost-python1.42.0
5601 libboost-thread1.42.0
5602 libchamplain-0.4-0
5603 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
5604 libcheese-gtk18
5605 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
5606 libcryptui0
5607 libdiscid0
5608 libelf1
5609 libepc-1.0-2
5610 libepc-common
5611 libepc-ui-1.0-2
5612 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5613 libfreerdp0
5614 libgconf2.0-cil
5615 libgdata-common
5616 libgdata7
5617 libgdu-gtk0
5618 libgee2
5619 libgeoclue0
5620 libgexiv2-0
5621 libgif4
5622 libglade2.0-cil
5623 libglib2.0-cil
5624 libgmime2.4-cil
5625 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5626 libgnome2.24-cil
5627 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
5628 libgpod-common
5629 libgpod4
5630 libgtk2.0-cil
5631 libgtkglext1
5632 libgtksourceview2.0-common
5633 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5634 libmono-addins0.2-cil
5635 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
5636 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5637 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
5638 libmono-posix2.0-cil
5639 libmono-security2.0-cil
5640 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5641 libmono-system2.0-cil
5642 libmtp8
5643 libmusicbrainz3-6
5644 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
5645 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
5646 libopal3.6.8
5647 libpolkit-gtk-1-0
5648 libpt2.6.7
5649 libpython2.6
5650 librpm1
5651 librpmio1
5652 libsdl1.2debian
5653 libsrtp0
5654 libssh-4
5655 libtelepathy-farsight0
5656 libtelepathy-glib0
5657 libtidy-0.99-0
5658 media-player-info
5659 mesa-utils
5660 mono-2.0-gac
5661 mono-gac
5662 mono-runtime
5663 nautilus-sendto
5664 nautilus-sendto-empathy
5665 p7zip-full
5666 pkg-config
5667 python-aptdaemon
5668 python-aptdaemon-gtk
5669 python-axiom
5670 python-beautifulsoup
5671 python-bugbuddy
5672 python-clientform
5673 python-coherence
5674 python-configobj
5675 python-crypto
5676 python-cupshelpers
5677 python-elementtree
5678 python-epsilon
5679 python-evolution
5680 python-feedparser
5681 python-gdata
5682 python-gdbm
5683 python-gst0.10
5684 python-gtkglext1
5685 python-gtksourceview2
5686 python-httplib2
5687 python-louie
5688 python-mako
5689 python-markupsafe
5690 python-mechanize
5691 python-nevow
5692 python-notify
5693 python-opengl
5694 python-openssl
5695 python-pam
5696 python-pkg-resources
5697 python-pyasn1
5698 python-pysqlite2
5699 python-rdflib
5700 python-serial
5701 python-tagpy
5702 python-twisted-bin
5703 python-twisted-conch
5704 python-twisted-core
5705 python-twisted-web
5706 python-utidylib
5707 python-webkit
5708 python-xdg
5709 python-zope.interface
5710 remmina
5711 remmina-plugin-data
5712 remmina-plugin-rdp
5713 remmina-plugin-vnc
5714 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5715 rhythmbox-plugins
5716 rpm-common
5717 rpm2cpio
5718 seahorse-plugins
5719 shotwell
5720 software-center
5721 system-config-printer-udev
5722 telepathy-gabble
5723 telepathy-mission-control-5
5724 telepathy-salut
5725 tomboy
5726 totem
5727 totem-coherence
5728 totem-mozilla
5729 totem-plugins
5730 transmission-common
5731 xdg-user-dirs
5732 xdg-user-dirs-gtk
5733 xserver-xephyr
5734 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5735
5736 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5737
5738 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5739 cheese
5740 ekiga
5741 eog
5742 epiphany-extensions
5743 evolution-exchange
5744 fast-user-switch-applet
5745 file-roller
5746 gcalctool
5747 gconf-editor
5748 gdm
5749 gedit
5750 gedit-common
5751 gnome-games
5752 gnome-games-data
5753 gnome-nettool
5754 gnome-system-tools
5755 gnome-themes
5756 gnuchess
5757 gucharmap
5758 guile-1.8-libs
5759 libavahi-ui0
5760 libdmx1
5761 libgalago3
5762 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
5763 libgtksourceview2.0-0
5764 liblircclient0
5765 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
5766 libspeexdsp1
5767 libsvga1
5768 rhythmbox
5769 seahorse
5770 sound-juicer
5771 system-config-printer
5772 totem-common
5773 transmission-gtk
5774 vinagre
5775 vino
5776 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5777
5778 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5779
5780 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5781 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5782 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5783
5784 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5785
5786 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5787 [nothing]
5788 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5789
5790 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
5791
5792 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5793
5794 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5795 ksmserver
5796 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5797
5798 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
5799
5800 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5801 kwin
5802 network-manager-kde
5803 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5804
5805 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5806
5807 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5808 arts
5809 dolphin
5810 freespacenotifier
5811 google-gadgets-gst
5812 google-gadgets-xul
5813 kappfinder
5814 kcalc
5815 kcharselect
5816 kde-core
5817 kde-plasma-desktop
5818 kde-standard
5819 kde-window-manager
5820 kdeartwork
5821 kdeartwork-emoticons
5822 kdeartwork-style
5823 kdeartwork-theme-icon
5824 kdebase
5825 kdebase-apps
5826 kdebase-workspace
5827 kdebase-workspace-bin
5828 kdebase-workspace-data
5829 kdeeject
5830 kdelibs
5831 kdeplasma-addons
5832 kdeutils
5833 kdewallpapers
5834 kdf
5835 kfloppy
5836 kgpg
5837 khelpcenter4
5838 kinfocenter
5839 konq-plugins-l10n
5840 konqueror-nsplugins
5841 kscreensaver
5842 kscreensaver-xsavers
5843 ktimer
5844 kwrite
5845 libgle3
5846 libkde4-ruby1.8
5847 libkonq5
5848 libkonq5-templates
5849 libnetpbm10
5850 libplasma-ruby
5851 libplasma-ruby1.8
5852 libqt4-ruby1.8
5853 marble-data
5854 marble-plugins
5855 netpbm
5856 nuvola-icon-theme
5857 plasma-dataengines-workspace
5858 plasma-desktop
5859 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
5860 plasma-runners-addons
5861 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
5862 plasma-scriptengine-python
5863 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
5864 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
5865 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
5866 plasma-scriptengines
5867 plasma-wallpapers-addons
5868 plasma-widget-folderview
5869 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
5870 ruby
5871 sweeper
5872 update-notifier-kde
5873 xscreensaver-data-extra
5874 xscreensaver-gl
5875 xscreensaver-gl-extra
5876 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
5877 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5878
5879 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
5880
5881 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
5882 ark
5883 google-gadgets-common
5884 google-gadgets-qt
5885 htdig
5886 kate
5887 kdebase-bin
5888 kdebase-data
5889 kdepasswd
5890 kfind
5891 klipper
5892 konq-plugins
5893 konqueror
5894 ksysguard
5895 ksysguardd
5896 libarchive1
5897 libcln6
5898 libeet1
5899 libeina-svn-06
5900 libggadget-1.0-0b
5901 libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
5902 libgps19
5903 libkdecorations4
5904 libkephal4
5905 libkonq4
5906 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
5907 libkscreensaver5
5908 libksgrd4
5909 libksignalplotter4
5910 libkunitconversion4
5911 libkwineffects1a
5912 libmarblewidget4
5913 libntrack-qt4-1
5914 libntrack0
5915 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
5916 libplasmaclock4a
5917 libplasmagenericshell4
5918 libprocesscore4a
5919 libprocessui4a
5920 libqalculate5
5921 libqedje0a
5922 libqtruby4shared2
5923 libqzion0a
5924 libruby1.8
5925 libscim8c2a
5926 libsmokekdecore4-3
5927 libsmokekdeui4-3
5928 libsmokekfile3
5929 libsmokekhtml3
5930 libsmokekio3
5931 libsmokeknewstuff2-3
5932 libsmokeknewstuff3-3
5933 libsmokekparts3
5934 libsmokektexteditor3
5935 libsmokekutils3
5936 libsmokenepomuk3
5937 libsmokephonon3
5938 libsmokeplasma3
5939 libsmokeqtcore4-3
5940 libsmokeqtdbus4-3
5941 libsmokeqtgui4-3
5942 libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
5943 libsmokeqtopengl4-3
5944 libsmokeqtscript4-3
5945 libsmokeqtsql4-3
5946 libsmokeqtsvg4-3
5947 libsmokeqttest4-3
5948 libsmokeqtuitools4-3
5949 libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
5950 libsmokeqtxml4-3
5951 libsmokesolid3
5952 libsmokesoprano3
5953 libtaskmanager4a
5954 libtidy-0.99-0
5955 libweather-ion4a
5956 libxklavier16
5957 libxxf86misc1
5958 okteta
5959 oxygencursors
5960 plasma-dataengines-addons
5961 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
5962 plasma-widget-lancelot
5963 plasma-widgets-addons
5964 plasma-widgets-workspace
5965 polkit-kde-1
5966 ruby1.8
5967 systemsettings
5968 update-notifier-common
5969 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5970
5971 &lt;p&gt;Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
5972 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
5973 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
5974 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
5975 </description>
5976 </item>
5977
5978 <item>
5979 <title>Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</title>
5980 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</link>
5981 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</guid>
5982 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
5983 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the computers in use by the
5984 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux project&lt;/a&gt;
5985 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
5986 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
5987 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine. This was a
5988 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
5989 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
5990 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
5991 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.&lt;/p&gt;
5992
5993 &lt;p&gt;I found
5994 &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM&quot;&gt;a
5995 nice recipe&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
5996 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
5997 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
5998 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
5999 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.&lt;/p&gt;
6000
6001 &lt;pre&gt;
6002 #!/bin/sh
6003
6004 # Based on
6005 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
6006
6007 set -e
6008 set -x
6009
6010 if [ -z &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
6011 echo &quot;Usage: $0 &amp;lt;hostname&amp;gt;&quot;
6012 exit 1
6013 else
6014 host=&quot;$1&quot;
6015 fi
6016
6017 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
6018 echo &quot;error: unable to find LVM volume for $host&quot;
6019 exit 1
6020 fi
6021
6022 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
6023 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
6024 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
6025 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
6026
6027 img=$host.img
6028 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
6029 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
6030
6031 parted $img mklabel msdos
6032 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
6033 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
6034 parted $img set 1 boot on
6035
6036 modprobe dm-mod
6037 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
6038 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
6039
6040 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
6041 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
6042 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
6043
6044 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
6045 losetup -d /dev/loop0
6046 &lt;/pre&gt;
6047
6048 &lt;p&gt;The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
6049 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;
6050
6051 &lt;p&gt;After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
6052 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
6053 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
6054 seem to work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
6055 </description>
6056 </item>
6057
6058 <item>
6059 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</title>
6060 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</link>
6061 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</guid>
6062 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
6063 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m still running upgrade testing of the
6064 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
6065 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt;, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
6066 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.&lt;/p&gt;
6067
6068 &lt;p&gt;I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
6069 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
6070 can see if anything should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;
6071
6072 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
6073
6074 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
6075
6076 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6077 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
6078 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
6079 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
6080 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
6081 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
6082 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
6083 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
6084 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
6085 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
6086 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
6087 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6088 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6089 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
6090 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
6091 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
6092 libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
6093 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6094 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
6095 libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6096 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
6097 libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
6098 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6099 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
6100 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
6101 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
6102 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6103 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6104 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
6105 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6106 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
6107 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
6108 libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6109 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
6110 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
6111 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
6112 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
6113 mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
6114 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
6115 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
6116 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
6117 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
6118 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
6119 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
6120 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
6121 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
6122 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
6123 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
6124 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
6125 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
6126 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
6127 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
6128 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
6129 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6130 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
6131 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
6132 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
6133 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
6134 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
6135 zip
6136 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6137
6138 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
6139
6140 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6141 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
6142 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
6143 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
6144 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
6145 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
6146 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
6147 guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
6148 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
6149 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
6150 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
6151 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
6152 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6153 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6154 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6155 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6156 libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
6157 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6158 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
6159 libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
6160 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
6161 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
6162 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
6163 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
6164 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
6165 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
6166 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
6167 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
6168 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
6169 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
6170 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6171
6172 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
6173
6174 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6175 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6176 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6177
6178 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
6179
6180 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6181 [nothing]
6182 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6183
6184 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
6185
6186 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
6187
6188 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6189 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
6190 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6191 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
6192 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
6193 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
6194 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
6195 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6196 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
6197 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
6198 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6199 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
6200 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
6201 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
6202 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
6203 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
6204 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
6205 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
6206 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
6207 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
6208 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
6209 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
6210 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
6211 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
6212 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
6213 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
6214 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
6215 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
6216 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
6217 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
6218 ttf-sazanami-gothic
6219 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6220
6221 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
6222
6223 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6224 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
6225 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
6226 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
6227 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
6228 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
6229 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
6230 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
6231 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
6232 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
6233 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
6234 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
6235 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
6236 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
6237 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
6238 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6239 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6240 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
6241 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
6242 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6243 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
6244 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6245 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
6246 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6247 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6248 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
6249 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
6250 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
6251 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
6252 libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
6253 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
6254 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
6255 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
6256 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
6257 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6258
6259 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
6260
6261 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6262 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
6263 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
6264 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
6265 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
6266 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6267 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
6268 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6269 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6270
6271 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
6272
6273 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6274 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
6275 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6276 </description>
6277 </item>
6278
6279 <item>
6280 <title>Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</title>
6281 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</link>
6282 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</guid>
6283 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
6284 <description>&lt;p&gt;Answering
6285 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html&quot;&gt;the
6286 call from the Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; for
6287 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnashdev.org:8010&quot;&gt;buildbot&lt;/a&gt; slaves to test the
6288 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
6289 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
6290 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
6291 releases out more often.&lt;/p&gt;
6292
6293 &lt;p&gt;As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
6294 I have considered setting up a &lt;a
6295 href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/&quot;&gt;Debian/kfreebsd&lt;/a&gt;
6296 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
6297 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
6298 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
6299 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
6300 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
6301 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
6302 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
6303 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
6304 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
6305 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
6306 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
6307 </description>
6308 </item>
6309
6310 <item>
6311 <title>Debian in 3D</title>
6312 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</link>
6313 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</guid>
6314 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
6315 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6316
6317 &lt;p&gt;3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
6318 3D linked in from
6319 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/&quot;&gt;the
6320 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6321 </description>
6322 </item>
6323
6324 <item>
6325 <title>Software updates 2010-10-24</title>
6326 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</link>
6327 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</guid>
6328 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
6329 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some updates.&lt;/p&gt;
6330
6331 &lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;gnash pledge&lt;/a&gt; to
6332 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of 10
6333 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
6334 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
6335 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
6336 :)&lt;/p&gt;
6337
6338 &lt;p&gt;On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
6339 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
6340 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
6341 It is called
6342 &lt;a href=&quot;http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html&quot;&gt;kcov&lt;/a&gt;,
6343 and can be used using &lt;tt&gt;kcov &amp;lt;directory&amp;gt; &amp;lt;binary&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.
6344 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
6345 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
6346 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
6347 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.&lt;/p&gt;
6348
6349 &lt;p&gt;Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for &lt;a
6350 href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html&quot;&gt;a
6351 new alpha release of Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;, and just published the second
6352 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
6353 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
6354 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
6355 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
6356 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
6357 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
6358 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.&lt;/p&gt;
6359 </description>
6360 </item>
6361
6362 <item>
6363 <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
6364 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
6365 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
6366 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
6367 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote&quot;&gt;Debian
6368 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the adobe-flashplugin package the
6369 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
6370 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
6371 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
6372 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
6373 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
6374
6375 &lt;p&gt;In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
6376&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&amp;do=view&amp;target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
6377 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
6378 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;»), one of the most important problems
6379 schools experienced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
6380 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
6381 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
6382 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
6383 good reason to stay with Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
6384
6385 &lt;p&gt;I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
6386 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
6387 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
6388 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
6389 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
6390 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
6391 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
6392 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
6393 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
6394 pages they want to visit.&lt;/p&gt;
6395
6396 &lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
6397 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
6398 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
6399 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
6400 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
6401 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
6402 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
6403 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
6404 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
6405 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
6406 accept the new package into Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
6407 </description>
6408 </item>
6409
6410 <item>
6411 <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
6412 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
6413 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
6414 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
6415 <description>&lt;p&gt;I discovered this while doing
6416 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;automated
6417 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;. A few packages
6418 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
6419 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
6420 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
6421
6422 &lt;p&gt;An example is from todays
6423 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt&quot;&gt;upgrade
6424 of KDE using aptitude&lt;/a&gt;. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
6425 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
6426 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
6427 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
6428 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
6429 because its dependencies are unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;
6430
6431 &lt;p&gt;In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:&lt;/p&gt;
6432
6433 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6434 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
6435 perl-modules depends on perl (&gt;= 5.10.1-1); however:
6436 Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
6437 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
6438 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
6439 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6440
6441 &lt;p&gt;The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
6442 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/527917&quot;&gt;reported as a bug&lt;/a&gt;, and will
6443 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
6444 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
6445 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
6446 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
6447 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
6448 of dependency loops.&lt;/p&gt;
6449
6450 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to
6451 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html&quot;&gt;the
6452 tireless effort by Bill Allombert&lt;/a&gt;, the number of circular
6453 dependencies
6454 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html&quot;&gt;left in Debian
6455 is dropping&lt;/a&gt;, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6456
6457 &lt;p&gt;Todays testing also exposed a bug in
6458 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590605&quot;&gt;update-notifier&lt;/a&gt; and
6459 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590604&quot;&gt;different behaviour&lt;/a&gt; between
6460 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
6461 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
6462 it.&lt;/p&gt;
6463 </description>
6464 </item>
6465
6466 <item>
6467 <title>What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</title>
6468 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</link>
6469 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</guid>
6470 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6471 <description>&lt;p&gt;This is a
6472 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;followup&lt;/a&gt;
6473 on my
6474 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html&quot;&gt;previous
6475 work&lt;/a&gt; on
6476 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html&quot;&gt;merging
6477 all&lt;/a&gt; the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
6478
6479 &lt;p&gt;As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
6480 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
6481 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
6482 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
6483
6484 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
6485 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
6486 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
6487
6488 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;powerdns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6489
6490 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend&quot;&gt;Clues
6491 on how to&lt;/a&gt; set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
6492 the web.
6493
6494 &lt;p&gt;PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
6495 One &quot;strict&quot; mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
6496 using the same LDAP objects, and a &quot;tree&quot; mode where the forward and
6497 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
6498 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
6499 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.&lt;/p&gt;
6500
6501 &lt;p&gt;In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
6502 base, and uses a &quot;base&quot; scoped search for the DNS name by adding
6503 &quot;dc=tjener,dc=intern,&quot; to the base with a filter for
6504 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; for the forward entry and
6505 &quot;dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,&quot; with a filter for
6506 &quot;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&quot; for the reverse entry. For
6507 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
6508 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
6509 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
6510 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
6511 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
6512 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
6513 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
6514 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
6515 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
6516 ldapsearch commands could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6517
6518 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6519 ldapsearch -h ldap \
6520 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
6521 -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
6522 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
6523 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
6524 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
6525 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
6526
6527 ldapsearch -h ldap \
6528 -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
6529 -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&#39;
6530 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
6531 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
6532 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
6533 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6534
6535 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
6536 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
6537 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
6538 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6539 also exist.&lt;/p&gt;
6540
6541 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6542 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6543 objectclass: top
6544 objectclass: dnsdomain
6545 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6546 dc: tjener
6547 arecord: 10.0.2.2
6548 associateddomain: tjener.intern
6549
6550 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6551 objectclass: top
6552 objectclass: dnsdomain2
6553 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6554 dc: 2
6555 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
6556 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
6557 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6558
6559 &lt;p&gt;In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
6560 forward DNS entries, it is doing a &quot;subtree&quot; scoped search with the
6561 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
6562 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; and requests the attributes dnsttl,
6563 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
6564 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
6565 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
6566 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is &quot;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&quot;
6567 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
6568 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
6569 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
6570 instead.&lt;/p&gt;
6571
6572 &lt;p&gt;The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
6573 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6574
6575 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6576 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6577 &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
6578 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
6579 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
6580 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
6581 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
6582
6583 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6584 &#39;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&#39; associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
6585 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6586
6587 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
6588 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
6589 reverse lookups.&lt;/p&gt;
6590
6591 &lt;p&gt;A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
6592 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
6593 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
6594 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
6595
6596 &lt;p&gt;The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
6597 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
6598 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.&lt;/p&gt;
6599
6600 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
6601 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
6602 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
6603 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
6604 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.&lt;/p&gt;
6605
6606 &lt;p&gt;There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
6607 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
6608 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
6609 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
6610 (zonename and relativedomainname).&lt;/p&gt;
6611
6612 &lt;p&gt;My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
6613 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
6614 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
6615 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
6616 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
6617 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):&lt;/p&gt;
6618
6619 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6620 objectclass ( some-oid NAME &#39;dnsDomainAux&#39;
6621 SUP top
6622 AUXILIARY
6623 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
6624 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
6625 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
6626 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
6627 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
6628 ))
6629 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6630
6631 &lt;p&gt;This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
6632 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
6633 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I&#39;ve sent an email to the PowerDNS
6634 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
6635 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
6636 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.&lt;/p&gt;
6637
6638 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISC dhcp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6639
6640 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
6641 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
6642 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
6643 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
6644 what is needed without having to read the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
6645
6646 &lt;p&gt;In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
6647 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
6648 stored. These are the relevant entries from
6649 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:&lt;/p&gt;
6650
6651 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6652 ldap-base-dn &quot;dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot;;
6653 ldap-dhcp-server-cn &quot;dhcp&quot;;
6654 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6655
6656 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
6657 configuration it need. The cn &quot;dhcp&quot; is located using the given LDAP
6658 base and the filter &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))&quot;. The
6659 search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
6660
6661 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6662 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6663 cn: dhcp
6664 objectClass: top
6665 objectClass: dhcpServer
6666 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6667 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6668
6669 &lt;p&gt;The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
6670 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
6671 is located using a base scope search with base &quot;cn=DHCP
6672 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; and filter
6673 &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))&quot;.
6674 The search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
6675
6676 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6677 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6678 cn: DHCP Config
6679 objectClass: top
6680 objectClass: dhcpService
6681 objectClass: dhcpOptions
6682 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6683 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
6684 dhcpStatements: authoritative
6685 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
6686 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
6687 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
6688 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6689
6690 &lt;p&gt;Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
6691 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
6692 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
6693 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
6694 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
6695 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
6696 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
6697 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
6698 related computer objects.&lt;/p&gt;
6699
6700 &lt;p&gt;When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
6701 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
6702 scoped search with &quot;cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; as
6703 the base and &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
6704 00:00:00:00:00:00))&quot; as the filter. This is what a host object look
6705 like:&lt;/p&gt;
6706
6707 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6708 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6709 cn: hostname
6710 objectClass: top
6711 objectClass: dhcpHost
6712 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
6713 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
6714 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6715
6716 &lt;p&gt;There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
6717 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
6718 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
6719 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
6720 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
6721 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
6722 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
6723 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
6724 structural object class.
6725
6726 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6727
6728 &lt;p&gt;The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
6729 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its &quot;tree&quot; mode is rigid when it
6730 come to the the LDAP structure, the &quot;strict&quot; mode is very flexible,
6731 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
6732 in the configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
6733
6734 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
6735 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
6736 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
6737 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
6738 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
6739 structure.&lt;/p&gt;
6740
6741 &lt;p&gt;Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
6742 this might work for Debian Edu:&lt;/p&gt;
6743
6744 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6745 ou=services
6746 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
6747 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
6748 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
6749 cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
6750 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
6751 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
6752 cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
6753 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
6754 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
6755 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
6756 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6757
6758 &lt;P&gt;This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
6759 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
6760 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
6761 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.&lt;/p&gt;
6762
6763 &lt;p&gt;The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
6764 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6765
6766 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6767 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6768 dc: hostname
6769 objectClass: top
6770 objectClass: dhcpHost
6771 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6772 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
6773 associateddomain: hostname.intern
6774 arecord: 10.11.12.13
6775 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
6776 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
6777 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6778
6779 &lt;/p&gt;One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
6780 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
6781 auxiliary object class.&lt;/p&gt;
6782 </description>
6783 </item>
6784
6785 <item>
6786 <title>Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</title>
6787 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</link>
6788 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</guid>
6789 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
6790 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
6791 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
6792 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
6793 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
6794 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
6795
6796 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
6797 information finally found a solution that seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
6798
6799 &lt;p&gt;The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
6800 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
6801 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
6802 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
6803 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
6804 to a slave DNS server.&lt;/p&gt;
6805
6806 &lt;p&gt;If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
6807 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
6808 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
6809 I&#39;ve written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
6810 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
6811 seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
6812
6813 &lt;p&gt;With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
6814 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
6815 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
6816 this:&lt;/p&gt;
6817
6818 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6819 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6820 cn: hostname
6821 objectClass: dhcphost
6822 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6823 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
6824 associateddomain: hostname.intern
6825 arecord: 10.11.12.13
6826 dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
6827 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
6828 ldapconfigsound: Y
6829 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6830
6831 &lt;p&gt;The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
6832 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
6833 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
6834 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
6835
6836 &lt;p&gt;I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
6837 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
6838 outside the &quot;DHCP Config&quot; subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
6839 that. If I can&#39;t figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
6840 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
6841 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
6842 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
6843 might be a good place to put it.&lt;/p&gt;
6844
6845 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6846 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
6847 </description>
6848 </item>
6849
6850 <item>
6851 <title>Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</title>
6852 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</link>
6853 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</guid>
6854 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6855 <description>&lt;p&gt;Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
6856 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
6857 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
6858 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.&lt;/p&gt;
6859
6860 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
6861 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
6862 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
6863 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
6864 LTSP clients.&lt;/p&gt;
6865
6866 &lt;p&gt;The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
6867 in a &quot;computer&quot; LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
6868 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.&lt;/p&gt;
6869
6870 &lt;p&gt;This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
6871 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
6872 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?&lt;/p&gt;
6873
6874 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6875 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
6876 #
6877 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
6878 #
6879 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
6880 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
6881 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
6882 #
6883 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
6884 # existence of attribute names.
6885 #
6886 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
6887 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
6888 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
6889 #
6890 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
6891 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
6892 #
6893 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME &#39;ltspClientAux&#39;
6894 # SUP top
6895 # AUXILIARY
6896 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
6897
6898 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
6899 if [ &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; ] ; then
6900 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
6901 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk &#39;{print $5}&#39;|sort -u) ; do
6902 filter=&quot;(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))&quot;
6903 ldapsearch -h &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; -b &quot;$LDAPBASE&quot; -v -x &quot;$filter&quot; | \
6904 grep &#39;^ltspConfig&#39; | while read attr value ; do
6905 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
6906 attr=$(echo $attr | sed &#39;s/^ltspConfig//i&#39; | tr a-z A-Z)
6907 # bass value on to clients
6908 eval &quot;$attr=$value; export $attr&quot;
6909 done
6910 done
6911 fi
6912 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6913
6914 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
6915 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
6916 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
6917 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
6918 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6919
6920 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6921 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
6922
6923 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
6924 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
6925 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html&quot;&gt;PC
6926 Xperience, Inc., 2000&lt;/a&gt;. I found its
6927 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/&quot;&gt;files&lt;/a&gt; on a
6928 personal home page over at redhat.com.&lt;/p&gt;
6929 </description>
6930 </item>
6931
6932 <item>
6933 <title>jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
6934 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
6935 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
6936 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
6937 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since
6938 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html&quot;&gt;my
6939 last post&lt;/a&gt; about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
6940 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
6941 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jxplorer.org/&quot;&gt;jXplorer&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of
6942 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
6943 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
6944 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
6945 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
6946 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html&quot;&gt;available in
6947 Debian&lt;/a&gt; testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
6948 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
6949 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
6950 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
6951 </description>
6952 </item>
6953
6954 <item>
6955 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</title>
6956 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</link>
6957 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</guid>
6958 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
6959 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a short update on my &lt;a
6960 href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;my
6961 Debian Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrade testing&lt;/a&gt;. Here is a summary of the
6962 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I&#39;m
6963 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
6964 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
6965 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; and
6966 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585716&quot;&gt;#585716&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
6967
6968 &lt;p&gt;At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
6969 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
6970 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
6971 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
6972 publish the difference.&lt;/p&gt;
6973
6974 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
6975
6976 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6977 at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6978 libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
6979 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
6980 libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6981 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
6982 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
6983 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
6984 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
6985 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6986
6987 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
6988
6989 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
6990 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
6991 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
6992 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
6993 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
6994 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
6995 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
6996 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6997 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6998 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6999 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7000 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
7001 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
7002 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
7003 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
7004 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
7005 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7006 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
7007 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
7008 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
7009 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
7010 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7011
7012 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
7013
7014 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7015 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
7016 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
7017 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7018 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7019 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
7020 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
7021 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
7022 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7023 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7024 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7025 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7026 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
7027 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
7028 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
7029 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
7030 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
7031 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
7032 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
7033 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
7034 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
7035 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
7036 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7037
7038 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
7039
7040 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7041 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
7042 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
7043 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
7044 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7045
7046 &lt;p&gt;I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
7047 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120&quot;&gt;changed
7048 in git&lt;/a&gt; today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
7049 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
7050 the difference somewhat.
7051 </description>
7052 </item>
7053
7054 <item>
7055 <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
7056 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
7057 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
7058 <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
7059 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
7060 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
7061 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
7062 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
7063 &lt;a href=&quot;http://luma.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;LUMA&lt;/a&gt;, which has proved to
7064 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
7065 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
7066 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
7067 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
7068 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7069
7070 &lt;p&gt;I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
7071 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
7072 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
7073 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
7074 released.&lt;/p&gt;
7075
7076 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
7077 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
7078 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
7079 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/&quot;&gt;ldapvi&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;
7080
7081 &lt;p&gt;If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
7082 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
7083
7084 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
7085 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html&quot;&gt;gq&lt;/a&gt; package as a
7086 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
7087 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
7088 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
7089 </description>
7090 </item>
7091
7092 <item>
7093 <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
7094 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html</link>
7095 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html</guid>
7096 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
7097 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back, I
7098 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;complained
7099 about the fact&lt;/a&gt; that it is not possible with the provided schemas
7100 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
7101 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.&lt;/p&gt;
7102
7103 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
7104 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
7105 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
7106 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
7107
7108 &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
7109 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
7110 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
7111 Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
7112
7113 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
7114 the
7115 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00&quot;&gt;DHCP
7116 schema&lt;/a&gt; to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
7117 available today from IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
7118
7119 &lt;pre&gt;
7120 --- dhcp.schema (revision 65192)
7121 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
7122 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
7123 objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
7124 NAME &#39;dhcpHost&#39;
7125 DESC &#39;This represents information about a particular client&#39;
7126 - SUP top
7127 + SUP top AUXILIARY
7128 MUST cn
7129 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
7130 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT (&#39;dhcpService&#39; &#39;dhcpSubnet&#39; &#39;dhcpGroup&#39;) )
7131 &lt;/pre&gt;
7132
7133 &lt;p&gt;I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
7134 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
7135 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.&lt;/p&gt;
7136
7137 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7138 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
7139 </description>
7140 </item>
7141
7142 <item>
7143 <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
7144 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
7145 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
7146 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
7147 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
7148 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
7149 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
7150 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
7151 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
7152 this:
7153
7154 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7155 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7156 tasksel --new-install
7157 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7158
7159 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
7160 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
7161 any output what so ever.
7162
7163 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
7164 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
7165 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
7166 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
7167 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
7168 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
7169 code like this:
7170
7171 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7172 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7173 cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
7174 $cmd
7175 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7176
7177 &lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
7178 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
7179 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
7180 ~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
7181 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
7182 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
7183 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
7184
7185 &lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
7186 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
7187 like this.&lt;/p&gt;
7188 </description>
7189 </item>
7190
7191 <item>
7192 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
7193 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
7194 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
7195 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
7196 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
7197 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
7198 of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
7199 finally made the upgrade logs available from
7200 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
7201 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
7202 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
7203 I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;
7204
7205 &lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
7206 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
7207 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
7208 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
7209 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
7210 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
7211 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
7212 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;
7213
7214 &lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
7215 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
7216 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
7217 too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;
7218
7219 &lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
7220 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
7221 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
7222 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
7223 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
7224 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
7225 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
7226 continue.&lt;/p&gt;
7227
7228 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
7229 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
7230 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
7231 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
7232 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
7233 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
7234 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
7235 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7236 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7237 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7238 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7239 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7240 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7241 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7242 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7243 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7244 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7245 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7246 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7247 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7248 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7249 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7250 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7251 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7252 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7253 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7254 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7255 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7256 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
7257 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;
7258
7259 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;
7260
7261 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
7262 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
7263 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
7264 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
7265 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7266 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
7267 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
7268 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
7269 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
7270 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
7271 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7272 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
7273 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7274 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
7275 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
7276 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
7277 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
7278 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
7279 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
7280 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
7281 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
7282 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
7283 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
7284 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
7285 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
7286 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
7287 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
7288 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
7289 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
7290 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7291 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
7292 zip&lt;/p&gt;
7293
7294 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;
7295
7296 &lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
7297 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
7298 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
7299 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
7300 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
7301 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
7302 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7303 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7304 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7305 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7306 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7307 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7308 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7309 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7310 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7311 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7312 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7313 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7314 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7315 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7316 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7317 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7318 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7319 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7320 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7321 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7322 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7323 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
7324
7325 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
7326 &lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
7327 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7328 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
7329 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
7330 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7331 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
7332 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
7333 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7334 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
7335 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
7336 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
7337 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
7338 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
7339 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
7340 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
7341 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
7342 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7343 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7344 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7345 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
7346 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7347 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
7348 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
7349 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7350 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7351 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
7352 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
7353 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
7354 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
7355 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
7356 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
7357 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
7358 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
7359 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
7360 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7361 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
7362 xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
7363
7364 </description>
7365 </item>
7366
7367 <item>
7368 <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
7369 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
7370 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
7371 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
7372 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
7373 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
7374 have been discovered and reported in the process
7375 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
7376 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
7377 enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
7378 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
7379 am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;
7380
7381 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
7382 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
7383 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
7384 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
7385 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
7386 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;
7387
7388 &lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
7389 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
7390 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
7391 is created. The bug report
7392 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
7393 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
7394 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
7395 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
7396 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
7397 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
7398 issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
7399 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
7400 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
7401 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
7402 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
7403 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
7404 Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
7405
7406 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
7407 script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
7408 trick:&lt;/p&gt;
7409
7410 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7411 #!/bin/sh
7412 set -ex
7413
7414 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
7415 desktop=$1
7416 else
7417 desktop=gnome
7418 fi
7419
7420 from=lenny
7421 to=squeeze
7422
7423 exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
7424 unset LANG
7425 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
7426 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
7427 fuser -mv .
7428 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
7429 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
7430 cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
7431 #!/bin/sh
7432 exit 101
7433 EOF
7434 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
7435 exit_cleanup() {
7436 umount $tmpdir/proc
7437 }
7438 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
7439 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
7440 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
7441
7442 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
7443
7444 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
7445 # to return the correct answers.
7446 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
7447 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
7448
7449 # Include the desktop and laptop task
7450 for test in desktop laptop ; do
7451 echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
7452 #!/bin/sh
7453 exit 2
7454 EOF
7455 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
7456 done
7457
7458 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7459 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
7460 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
7461 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
7462
7463 echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
7464 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
7465 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
7466 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
7467 fuser -mv
7468 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7469
7470 &lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
7471 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
7472 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
7473 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
7474 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
7475 kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;
7476
7477 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
7478 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
7479 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
7480 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
7481 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
7482 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
7483 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;
7484
7485 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
7486 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
7487 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
7488 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
7489 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
7490 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
7491 </description>
7492 </item>
7493
7494 <item>
7495 <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
7496 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
7497 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
7498 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
7499 <description>&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
7500 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
7501 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
7502 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
7503 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
7504 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
7505 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;
7506
7507 &lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
7508 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
7509 COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;
7510
7511 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7512 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
7513 previous=N
7514 PREVLEVEL=
7515 RUNLEVEL=
7516 runlevel=S
7517 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
7518 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
7519 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
7520 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7521
7522 &lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
7523 script.&lt;/p&gt;
7524
7525 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7526 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
7527 previous=N
7528 PREVLEVEL=N
7529 RUNLEVEL=S
7530 runlevel=S
7531 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7532
7533 &lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
7534 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
7535 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;
7536
7537 &lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
7538 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
7539 choice.&lt;/p&gt;
7540 </description>
7541 </item>
7542
7543 <item>
7544 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
7545 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
7546 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
7547 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
7548 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
7549 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
7550 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
7551 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
7552 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
7553 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
7554 </description>
7555 </item>
7556
7557 <item>
7558 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
7559 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
7560 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
7561 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
7562 <description>&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
7563 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
7564 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
7565 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
7566 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
7567
7568 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7569 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
7570 vendor count
7571 Dell Computer Corporation 1
7572 PowerEdge 1750 1
7573 IBM 1
7574 eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]- 1
7575 Intel 2
7576 [no-dmi-info] 3
7577 maintainer:~#
7578 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7579
7580 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
7581 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
7582 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
7583 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
7584 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
7585
7586 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
7587 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
7588 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
7589 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
7590 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
7591 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
7592 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
7593 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
7594 </description>
7595 </item>
7596
7597 <item>
7598 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
7599 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
7600 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
7601 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
7602 <description>&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
7603 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
7604 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
7605 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
7606 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
7607
7608 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
7609 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
7610 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
7611 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
7612 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
7613 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
7614
7615 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
7616 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
7617 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
7618 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
7619 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
7620 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
7621 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
7622 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
7623
7624 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
7625 </description>
7626 </item>
7627
7628 <item>
7629 <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
7630 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
7631 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
7632 <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
7633 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
7634 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
7635 issues are known and should be solved:
7636
7637 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
7638
7639 &lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
7640 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
7641 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
7642 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
7643 seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
7644
7645 &lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
7646 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
7647 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
7648 maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
7649
7650 &lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
7651 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
7652 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
7653 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
7654 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
7655 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
7656 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
7657 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;
7658
7659 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7660
7661 &lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
7662 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
7663 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
7664 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;
7665
7666 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7667 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7668 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
7669 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7670
7671 &lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
7672 </description>
7673 </item>
7674
7675 <item>
7676 <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
7677 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
7678 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
7679 <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
7680 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
7681 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
7682 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
7683 definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;
7684
7685 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
7686 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
7687 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
7688 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
7689 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
7690 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
7691 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
7692 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
7693 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
7694 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
7695 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
7696 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
7697 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
7698 going to work.&lt;/p&gt;
7699
7700 &lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
7701 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
7702 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
7703 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
7704 &quot;external&quot; media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
7705 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
7706 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
7707 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
7708 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
7709 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
7710 Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
7711
7712 &lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
7713 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
7714 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
7715 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
7716 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
7717 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;
7718
7719 &lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
7720 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
7721 </description>
7722 </item>
7723
7724 <item>
7725 <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
7726 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
7727 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
7728 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
7729 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
7730 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
7731 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
7732 expected, if I am to believe the
7733 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
7734 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
7735 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
7736 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
7737 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
7738 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
7739 version.&lt;/p&gt;
7740
7741 More information about
7742 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
7743 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki. It is
7744 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
7745 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
7746
7747 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7748 CONCURRENCY=none
7749 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7750
7751 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7752 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7753 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
7754 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7755 </description>
7756 </item>
7757
7758 <item>
7759 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
7760 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
7761 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
7762 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
7763 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
7764 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
7765 system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
7766 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
7767 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
7768 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
7769 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
7770 to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
7771
7772 &lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
7773 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
7774 this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;
7775
7776 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7777 perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
7778 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7779
7780 &lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
7781 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;
7782
7783 &lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
7784 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
7785 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
7786 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
7787 written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
7788 </description>
7789 </item>
7790
7791 <item>
7792 <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
7793 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
7794 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
7795 <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
7796 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
7797 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
7798 has been
7799 &lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;
7800
7801 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
7802 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
7803 &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
7804 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
7805 based boot system. Tollef is
7806 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
7807 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
7808 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
7809 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
7810 at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;
7811
7812 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
7813 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
7814 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
7815 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
7816 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
7817 way forward.&lt;/p&gt;
7818
7819 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
7820 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
7821 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
7822 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
7823 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
7824 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
7825 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
7826 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
7827 with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
7828 </description>
7829 </item>
7830
7831 <item>
7832 <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
7833 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
7834 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
7835 <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
7836 <description>&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
7837 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
7838 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
7839 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
7840 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
7841 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
7842 /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
7843
7844 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7845 CONCURRENCY=makefile
7846 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7847
7848 &lt;p&gt;That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
7849 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
7850 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
7851 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
7852 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
7853 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
7854 make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;
7855
7856 &lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
7857 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
7858 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
7859 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
7860 the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7861
7862 &lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
7863 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
7864 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
7865 fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;
7866
7867 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7868 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7869 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
7870 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7871 </description>
7872 </item>
7873
7874 <item>
7875 <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
7876 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>
7877 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
7878 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
7879 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
7880 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
7881 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
7882 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
7883 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
7884 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
7885 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
7886
7887 &lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
7888 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
7889 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
7890 </description>
7891 </item>
7892
7893 <item>
7894 <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
7895 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>
7896 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
7897 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
7898 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
7899 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
7900 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
7901 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
7902 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
7903 the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
7904
7905 &lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
7906 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
7907 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
7908 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
7909 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
7910 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
7911 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
7912 upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
7913 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
7914 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
7915 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
7916 working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;
7917
7918 &lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
7919 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
7920 </description>
7921 </item>
7922
7923 <item>
7924 <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
7925 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>
7926 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
7927 <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
7928 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
7929 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
7930 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
7931 funded
7932 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
7933 gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
7934 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
7935 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
7936 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
7937 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;
7938
7939 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
7940 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
7941 boot:&lt;/p&gt;
7942
7943 &lt;ul&gt;
7944
7945 &lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;
7946
7947 &lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
7948 clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;
7949
7950 &lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
7951 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
7952 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;
7953
7954 &lt;/ul&gt;
7955
7956 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
7957 &lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
7958 Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.
7959
7960 &lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
7961 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
7962 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
7963 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
7964 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
7965 using this.&lt;/p&gt;
7966
7967 &lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
7968 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
7969 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
7970 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
7971 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
7972 this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
7973 insserv&#39;. Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7974 </description>
7975 </item>
7976
7977 <item>
7978 <title>BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</title>
7979 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</link>
7980 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</guid>
7981 <pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2009 23:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
7982 <description>&lt;p&gt;Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
7983 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
7984 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
7985 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
7986 dager siden kom
7987 &lt;a href=&quot;http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf&quot;&gt;siste
7988 rapport&lt;/a&gt;, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
7989 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
7990 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror&quot;&gt;BSA
7991 höftade Sverigesiffror&lt;/a&gt;, oppsummeres slik:&lt;/p&gt;
7992
7993 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7994 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
7995 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
7996 företag. &quot;Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
7997 exakta&quot;, säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
7998 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7999
8000 &lt;p&gt;Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er &lt;a
8001 href=&quot;http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality&quot;&gt;BSA
8002 piracy figures need a shot of reality&lt;/a&gt; og &lt;a
8003 href=&quot;http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/&quot;&gt;Does The WIPO
8004 Copyright Treaty Work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8005
8006 &lt;p&gt;Fant lenkene via &lt;a
8007 href=&quot;http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242&quot;&gt;oppslag
8008 på Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8009 </description>
8010 </item>
8011
8012 <item>
8013 <title>IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</title>
8014 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</link>
8015 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</guid>
8016 <pubDate>Thu, 7 May 2009 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8017 <description>&lt;p&gt;Kom over
8018 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html&quot;&gt;interessante
8019 tall&lt;/a&gt; fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
8020 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
8021 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
8022 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
8023 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
8024 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.&lt;/p&gt;
8025 </description>
8026 </item>
8027
8028 <item>
8029 <title>Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</title>
8030 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</link>
8031 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</guid>
8032 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8033 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece&quot;&gt;Dagens
8034 IT melder&lt;/a&gt; at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
8035 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
8036 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
8037 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
8038 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
8039 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
8040 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
8041 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
8042 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
8043 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
8044 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
8045 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
8046 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
8047 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
8048 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
8049 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
8050 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
8051 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
8052 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.&lt;/p&gt;
8053
8054 &lt;p&gt;Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
8055 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
8056 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
8057 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
8058 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
8059 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
8060 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
8061 betydelige.&lt;/p&gt;
8062 </description>
8063 </item>
8064
8065 <item>
8066 <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
8067 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>
8068 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
8069 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8070 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
8071 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
8072 do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;
8073
8074 &lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
8075 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
8076 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
8077 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
8078 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
8079 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
8080 occurs. It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
8081 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
8082 &#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;. This tool has made it
8083 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
8084 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
8085
8086 &lt;p&gt;The second one is
8087 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
8088 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
8089 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
8090 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
8091 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
8092 and the company behind it is running
8093 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
8094 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
8095 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
8096 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
8097 X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
8098 Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;. The projects included in the
8099 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
8100 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;
8101
8102 &lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
8103 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
8104 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
8105 surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
8106 </description>
8107 </item>
8108
8109 <item>
8110 <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
8111 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>
8112 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
8113 <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8114 <description>&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
8115 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
8116 patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;. I completely disagree, as a
8117 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
8118 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
8119 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
8120 properties.&lt;/p&gt;
8121 </description>
8122 </item>
8123
8124 <item>
8125 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
8126 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
8127 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
8128 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
8129 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
8130 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
8131 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
8132 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
8133 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
8134 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
8135 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
8136 application.&lt;/p&gt;
8137
8138 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
8139 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
8140 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
8141 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
8142 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
8143 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
8144 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
8145
8146 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
8147 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
8148 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
8149 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
8150
8151 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
8152 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
8153 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
8154 </description>
8155 </item>
8156
8157 <item>
8158 <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
8159 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>
8160 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
8161 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8162 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
8163 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
8164 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
8165 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
8166 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
8167 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
8168 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
8169 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
8170 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
8171 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
8172 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
8173 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
8174 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
8175 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
8176 now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
8177 </description>
8178 </item>
8179
8180 <item>
8181 <title>Time for new LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
8182 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>
8183 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
8184 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8185 <description>&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
8186 optimal. There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
8187 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
8188 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
8189 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
8190 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
8191
8192 &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
8193 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
8194 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
8195 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
8196 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
8197 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
8198 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
8199 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
8200 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
8201 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
8202 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
8203 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
8204 specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;
8205
8206 &lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
8207 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
8208 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
8209 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;
8210
8211 &lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
8212 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;
8213
8214 &lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
8215 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
8216 new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
8217 </description>
8218 </item>
8219
8220 <item>
8221 <title>Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</title>
8222 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</link>
8223 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</guid>
8224 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
8225 <description>&lt;p&gt;Endelig er &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;
8226 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214&quot;&gt;Lenny&lt;/a&gt; gitt ut.
8227 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
8228 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
8229 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
8230 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; /
8231 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; ferdig
8232 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
8233 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
8234 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
8235 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
8236 &lt;tt&gt;insserv&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8237 </description>
8238 </item>
8239
8240 <item>
8241 <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
8242 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>
8243 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
8244 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
8245 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
8246 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
8247 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
8248 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
8249 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
8250 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
8251 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
8252 finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;
8253
8254 &lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
8255 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
8256 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
8257 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
8258 of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
8259 </description>
8260 </item>
8261
8262 <item>
8263 <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
8264 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>
8265 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
8266 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
8267 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
8268 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
8269 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
8270 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
8271 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
8272 notes are available on
8273 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
8274 Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
8275 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
8276 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
8277 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
8278 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
8279 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
8280 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
8281 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;
8282
8283 &lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
8284 be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
8285 </description>
8286 </item>
8287
8288 </channel>
8289 </rss>