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   5   <title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
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  14        <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
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  19
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  21
  22  <div class="entry">
  23   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a></div>
  24   <div class="date">2010-06-11 22:50</div>
  25   <div class="body">
  26 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
  27 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
  28 have been discovered and reported in the process
  29 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
  30 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
  31 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
  32 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
  33 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
  34
  35 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
  36 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
  37 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
  38 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
  39 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
  40 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
  41
  42 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
  43 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
  44 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
  45 is created.  The bug report
  46 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
  47 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
  48 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
  49 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
  50 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
  51 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
  52 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
  53 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
  54 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
  55 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
  56 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
  57 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
  58 Debian Squeeze.</p>
  59
  60 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
  61 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
  62 trick:</p>
  63
  64 <blockquote><pre>
  65 #!/bin/sh
  66 set -ex
  67
  68 if [ "$1" ] ; then
  69     desktop=$1
  70 else
  71     desktop=gnome
  72 fi
  73
  74 from=lenny
  75 to=squeeze
  76
  77 exec &lt; /dev/null
  78 unset LANG
  79 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
  80 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
  81 fuser -mv .
  82 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
  83 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
  84 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
  85 #!/bin/sh
  86 exit 101
  87 EOF
  88 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
  89 exit_cleanup() {
  90     umount $tmpdir/proc
  91 }
  92 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
  93 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
  94 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
  95
  96 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
  97
  98 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
  99 # to return the correct answers.
 100 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
 101     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
 102
 103 # Include the desktop and laptop task
 104 for test in desktop laptop ; do
 105     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
 106 #!/bin/sh
 107 exit 2
 108 EOF
 109     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
 110 done
 111
 112 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
 113 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
 114 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
 115 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
 116
 117 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
 118 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
 119 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
 120 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
 121 fuser -mv
 122 </pre></blockquote>
 123
 124 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
 125 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
 126 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
 127 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
 128 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
 129 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
 130
 131 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
 132 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
 133 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
 134 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
 135 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
 136 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
 137 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
 138
 139 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
 140 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
 141 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
 142 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
 143 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
 144 packages.</p>
 145 </div>
 146   <div class="tags">
 147
 148
 149
 150    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 151
 152   </div>
 153  </div>
 154  <div class="padding"></div>
 155
 156  <div class="entry">
 157   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html">Skolelinux er laget for sentraldrifting, naturligvis</a></div>
 158   <div class="date">2010-06-09 12:30</div>
 159   <div class="body">
 160 <p>Det er merkelig hvordan myter om Skolelinux overlever.  En slik
 161 myte er at Skolelinux ikke kan sentraldriftes og ha sentralt plasserte
 162 tjenermaskiner.  I siste Computerworld Norge er
 163 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article169432.ece">IT-sjef
 164 Viggo Billdal i Steinkjer intervjuet</a>, og forteller uten
 165 blygsel:</p>
 166
 167 <blockquote><p>Vi hadde Skolelinux, men det har vi sluttet med. Vi testet
 168 om det lønte seg med Microsoft eller en åpen plattform. Vi fant ut at
 169 Microsoft egentlig var totalt sett bedre egnet. Det var store
 170 driftskostnader med Skolelinux, blant annet på grunn av
 171 desentraliserte servere. Det var komplisert, så vi gikk vekk fra det
 172 og bruker nå bare Windows.</p></blockquote>
 173
 174 <p>En <a
 175 href="https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/bruker/2010-June/009101.html">rask
 176 sjekk</a> mot den norske brukerlista i Skolelinuxprosjektet forteller
 177 at Steinkjers forsøk foregikk fram til 2004/2005, og at Røysing skole
 178 i Steinkjer skal ha vært svært fornøyd med Skolelinux men at kommunen
 179 overkjørte skolen og krevde at de gikk over til Windows.  Et søk på
 180 nettet sendte meg til
 181 <a href="http://www.dn.no/multimedia/archive/00090/Dagens_it_nr__18_90826a.pdf">Dagens
 182 IT nr. 18 2005</a> hvor en kan lese på side 18:</p>
 183
 184 <blockquote><p>Inge Tømmerås ved Røysing skole i Steinkjer kjører ennå
 185 Microsoft, men forteller at kompetanseutfordringen med Skolelinux ikke
 186 var så stor.   Jeg syntes Skolelinux var utrolig lett å drifte uten
 187 forkunnskaper. Men man må jo selvsagt ha tilgang på ekstern kompetanse
 188 til installasjoner og maskinvarefeil, sier Tømmerås.</p></blockquote>
 189
 190 <p>Som systemarkitekten bak Skolelinux, kan jeg bare riste på hodet
 191 over påstanden om at Skolelinux krever desentraliserte tjenere.
 192 Skolelinux-arkitekturen er laget for sentralisert drift og plassering
 193 av tjenerne lokalt eller sentralt alt etter behov og nettkapasitet.
 194 Den er modellert på nettverks- og tjenerløsningen som brukes på
 195 Universitetet i Tromsø og Oslo, der jeg jobber med utvikling av
 196 driftstjenester.  Dette er det heldigvis noen som har fått med seg, og
 197 jeg er glad for å kunne sitere fra en kommentar på den overnevnte
 198 artikkelen.  Min venn og gamle kollega Sturle Sunde forteller der:
 199
 200 <blockquote>
 201 <p>I Flora kommune køyrer vi Skulelinux på skular med alt frå 15 til
 202 meir enn 500 elevar. Dei store skulane har eigen tenar, for det er
 203 mest praktisk. Eg, som er driftsansvarleg for heile nettet, ser
 204 sjeldan dei tenarane fysisk, men at dei står der gjer skulane mindre
 205 avhengige av eksterne linjer som er trege eller dyre. Dei minste
 206 skulane har ikkje eigen tenar. Å bruke sentral tenar er heller ikkje
 207 noko problem. Småskulane klarar seg fint med 1 mbit-linje til ein
 208 sentral tenar eller tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
 209
 210 <p>Det beste med Skulelinux er halvtjukke klientar. Dei treng ikkje
 211 harddisk og brukar minimalt med ressursar på tenaren fordi dei køyrer
 212 programma lokalt. Eit klasserom med 30 sju-åtte år gamle maskiner har
 213 mykje meir CPU og RAM totalt enn nokon moderne tenar til under
 214 millionen. Det trengst to kommandoar på den sentrale tenaren for å
 215 oppdatere alle klientane, både tynne og halvtjukke. Vi har ingen
 216 problem med diskar som ryk heller, som var eit problem før fordi
 217 elevane sat og sparka i maskinene. Og dei krev lite bandbreidde i
 218 nettet, so det er fullt mogleg å køyre slike på småskular med trege
 219 linjer mot tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
 220
 221 <p>Flora kommune har nesten 800 Linux-maskiner i sitt skulenett, og
 222 ein person som tek seg av drift av heile nettet, inkludert tenarar,
 223 klientar, operativsystem, programvare, heimekontorløysing og
 224 administrasjon av brukarar.</p>
 225
 226 <p>No skal det seiast at vi ikkje køyrer rein Skulelinux ut av
 227 boksen. Vi har gjort ein del tilpassingar mot noko Novell-greier som
 228 var der frå før, og som har komplisert installasjonen vår. Etter at
 229 oppsettet var gjort har løysinga vore stabil og kravd minimalt med
 230 arbeid.</p>
 231 </blockquote>
 232
 233 <p>Jeg vet at Narvik, Harstad og Oslo er kommuner der Skolelinux
 234 sentraldriftes med sentrale tjenere.  Det forteller meg at Steinkjers
 235 IT-sjef neppe bør skylde på Skolelinux-løsningen for sine 5 år gamle
 236 minner.</p>
 237 </div>
 238   <div class="tags">
 239
 240
 241
 242    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 243
 244   </div>
 245  </div>
 246  <div class="padding"></div>
 247
 248  <div class="entry">
 249   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a></div>
 250   <div class="date">2010-06-06 23:55</div>
 251   <div class="body">
 252 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
 253 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
 254 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
 255 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
 256 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
 257 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
 258 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
 259
 260 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
 261 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
 262 COLUMNS):</p>
 263
 264 <blockquote><pre>
 265 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
 266 previous=N
 267 PREVLEVEL=
 268 RUNLEVEL=
 269 runlevel=S
 270 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
 271 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
 272 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
 273 </pre></blockquote>
 274
 275 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
 276 script.</p>
 277
 278 <blockquote><pre>
 279 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
 280 previous=N
 281 PREVLEVEL=N
 282 RUNLEVEL=S
 283 runlevel=S
 284 </pre></blockquote>
 285
 286 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
 287 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
 288 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
 289
 290 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
 291 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
 292 choice.</p>
 293 </div>
 294   <div class="tags">
 295
 296
 297
 298    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 299
 300   </div>
 301  </div>
 302  <div class="padding"></div>
 303
 304  <div class="entry">
 305   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a></div>
 306   <div class="date">2010-06-06 14:15</div>
 307   <div class="body">
 308 <p>Via the
 309 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
 310 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
 311 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
 312 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
 313 following the standards wars of today.</p>
 314 </div>
 315   <div class="tags">
 316
 317
 318
 319    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 320
 321   </div>
 322  </div>
 323  <div class="padding"></div>
 324
 325  <div class="entry">
 326   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a></div>
 327   <div class="date">2010-06-03 12:05</div>
 328   <div class="body">
 329 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
 330 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
 331 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
 332 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
 333 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
 334
 335 <blockquote><pre>
 336 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
 337   vendor                    count
 338   Dell Computer Corporation     1
 339     PowerEdge 1750              1
 340   IBM                           1
 341     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
 342   Intel                         2
 343   [no-dmi-info]                 3
 344 maintainer:~#
 345 </pre></blockquote>
 346
 347 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
 348 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
 349 information listed with Intel as vendor and mo model, and virtual Xen
 350 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
 351 option to list the individual machines.</p>
 352
 353 <p>A larger list is
 354 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
 355 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
 356 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
 357 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
 358 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
 359 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
 360 collector.</p>
 361 </div>
 362   <div class="tags">
 363
 364
 365
 366    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
 367
 368   </div>
 369  </div>
 370  <div class="padding"></div>
 371
 372  <div class="entry">
 373   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p___norsk__mot_sykkel.html">Togsatsing på norsk, mot sykkel</a></div>
 374   <div class="date">2010-06-02 23:45</div>
 375   <div class="body">
 376 <p>Det står dårlig til med toget når en finner på å la det
 377 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3677060.ece">kappkjøre
 378 med sykkel</a>...  Jeg tror det trengs strukturendringer for å få
 379 fikset på togproblemene i Norge.</p>
 380
 381 <p>Mon tro hva toglinje mellom Narvik og Tromsø ville hatt slags
 382 effekt på området der?</p>
 383 </div>
 384   <div class="tags">
 385
 386
 387
 388    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
 389
 390   </div>
 391  </div>
 392  <div class="padding"></div>
 393
 394  <div class="entry">
 395   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a></div>
 396   <div class="date">2010-06-01 17:05</div>
 397   <div class="body">
 398 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
 399 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
 400 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
 401 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
 402 wait.</p>
 403
 404 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
 405 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
 406 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
 407 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
 408 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
 409 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
 410
 411 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
 412 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
 413 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
 414 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
 415 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
 416 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
 417 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
 418 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
 419
 420 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
 421 </div>
 422   <div class="tags">
 423
 424
 425
 426    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 427
 428   </div>
 429  </div>
 430  <div class="padding"></div>
 431
 432  <div class="entry">
 433   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a></div>
 434   <div class="date">2010-05-27 23:55</div>
 435   <div class="body">
 436 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
 437 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
 438 issues are known and should be solved:
 439
 440 <p><ul>
 441
 442 <li>The wicd package seen to
 443 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
 444 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
 445 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
 446 seem to be on the case.</li>
 447
 448 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
 449 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
 450 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
 451 maintainer is on the case.</li>
 452
 453 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
 454 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
 455 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
 456 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
 457 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
 458 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
 459 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
 460 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
 461
 462 </ul></p>
 463
 464 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
 465 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
 466 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
 467 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
 468
 469 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 470 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 471 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 472 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 473
 474 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
 475 </div>
 476   <div class="tags">
 477
 478
 479
 480    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 481
 482   </div>
 483  </div>
 484  <div class="padding"></div>
 485
 486  <div class="entry">
 487   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a></div>
 488   <div class="date">2010-05-22 21:30</div>
 489   <div class="body">
 490 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
 491 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
 492 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
 493 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
 494
 495 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
 496 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
 497 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
 498 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
 499 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
 500 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
 501 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
 502 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
 503 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
 504 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
 505 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
 506 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
 507 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
 508 going to work.</p>
 509
 510 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
 511 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
 512 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
 513 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
 514 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
 515 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
 516 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
 517 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
 518 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
 519 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
 520 Edu.</p>
 521
 522 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
 523 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
 524 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
 525 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
 526 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
 527 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
 528
 529 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
 530 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
 531 </div>
 532   <div class="tags">
 533
 534
 535
 536    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 537
 538   </div>
 539  </div>
 540  <div class="padding"></div>
 541
 542  <div class="entry">
 543   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Magnetstripeinnhold_i_billetter_fra_Flytoget_og_Hurtigruten.html">Magnetstripeinnhold i billetter fra Flytoget og Hurtigruten</a></div>
 544   <div class="date">2010-05-21 16:00</div>
 545   <div class="body">
 546 <p>For en stund tilbake kjøpte jeg en magnetkortleser for å kunne
 547 titte på hva som er skrevet inn på magnetstripene til ulike kort.  Har
 548 ikke hatt tid til å analysere mange kort så langt, men tenkte jeg
 549 skulle dele innholdet på to kort med mine lesere.</p>
 550
 551 <p>For noen dager siden tok jeg flyet til Harstad og Hurtigruten til
 552 Bergen.  Flytoget fra Oslo S til flyplassen ga meg en billett med
 553 magnetstripe.  Påtrykket finner jeg følgende informasjon:</p>
 554
 555 <pre>
 556 Flytoget Airport Express Train
 557
 558 Fra - Til        : Oslo Sentralstasjon
 559 Kategori         : Voksen
 560 Pris             : Nok 170,00
 561 Herav mva. 8,00% : NOK 12,59
 562 Betaling         : Kontant
 563 Til - Fra        : Oslo Lufthavn
 564 Utstedt:         : 08.05.10
 565 Gyldig Fra-Til   : 08.05.10-07.11.10
 566 Billetttype      : Enkeltbillett
 567
 568 102-1015-100508-48382-01-08
 569 </pre>
 570
 571 <p>På selve magnetstripen er innholdet
 572 <tt>;E?+900120011=23250996541068112619257138248441708433322932704083389389062603279671261502492655?</tt>.
 573 Aner ikke hva innholdet representerer, og det er lite overlapp mellom
 574 det jeg ser trykket på billetten og det jeg ser av tegn i
 575 magnetstripen.  Håper det betyr at de bruker kryptografiske metoder
 576 for å gjøre det vanskelig å forfalske billetter.</p>
 577
 578 <p>Den andre billetten er fra Hurtigruten, der jeg mistenker at
 579 strekkoden på fronten er mer brukt enn magnetstripen (det var i hvert
 580 fall den biten vi stakk inn i dørlåsen).</p>
 581
 582 <p>Påtrykket forsiden er følgende:</p>
 583
 584 <pre>
 585 Romnummer 727
 586 Hurtigruten
 587 Midnatsol
 588 Reinholdtsen
 589 Petter
 590 Bookingno: SAX69   0742193
 591 Harstad-Bergen
 592 Dep: 09.05.2010 Arr: 12.05.2010
 593 Lugar fra Risøyhamn
 594 Kost: FRO=4
 595 </pre>
 596
 597 <p>På selve magnetstripen er innholdet
 598 <tt>;1316010007421930=00000000000000000000?+E?</tt>.  Heller ikke her
 599 ser jeg mye korrespondanse mellom påtrykk og magnetstripe.</p>
 600 </div>
 601   <div class="tags">
 602
 603
 604
 605    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 606
 607   </div>
 608  </div>
 609  <div class="padding"></div>
 610
 611  <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="index.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS feed" width="36" height="14"></a></p>
 612
 613 <div id="sidebar">
 614
 615
 616
 617
 618
 619 <h2>Archive</h2>
 620 <ul>
 621
 622 <li>2010
 623 <ul>
 624
 625 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
 626
 627 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
 628
 629 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
 630
 631 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
 632
 633 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 634
 635 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (7)</a></li>
 636
 637 </ul></li>
 638
 639 <li>2009
 640 <ul>
 641
 642 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
 643
 644 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
 645
 646 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
 647
 648 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
 649
 650 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 651
 652 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
 653
 654 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
 655
 656 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
 657
 658 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
 659
 660 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
 661
 662 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
 663
 664 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
 665
 666 </ul></li>
 667
 668 <li>2008
 669 <ul>
 670
 671 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
 672
 673 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
 674
 675 </ul></li>
 676
 677 </ul>
 678
 679
 680
 681 <h2>Tags</h2>
 682 <ul>
 683
 684  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (11)</a></li>
 685
 686  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
 687
 688  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
 689
 690  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (5)</a></li>
 691
 692  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (25)</a></li>
 693
 694  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (25)</a></li>
 695
 696  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (36)</a></li>
 697
 698  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (1)</a></li>
 699
 700  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (6)</a></li>
 701
 702  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (2)</a></li>
 703
 704  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (1)</a></li>
 705
 706  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
 707
 708  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (5)</a></li>
 709
 710  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (67)</a></li>
 711
 712  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (75)</a></li>
 713
 714  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (12)</a></li>
 715
 716  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (11)</a></li>
 717
 718  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (10)</a></li>
 719
 720  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
 721
 722  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (8)</a></li>
 723
 724  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (3)</a></li>
 725
 726  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (12)</a></li>
 727
 728  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
 729
 730  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (10)</a></li>
 731
 732  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
 733
 734  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (6)</a></li>
 735
 736 </ul>
 737
 738 </div>
 739
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