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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "debian".
</h3>
25 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian
</a>
31 <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
32 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
33 later processing and graphing. The original collector store the
34 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
35 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
36 full level, last full level and current battery level. This make it
37 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
38 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.
</p>
40 <p>The new tools are available in
<tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/
</tt>
41 in the version
0.5.1 package in unstable. Get the new battery level graph
42 and lifetime prediction by running:
45 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
48 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.
</p>
50 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
54 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
57 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
58 when there are few data points. The graphs look a bit better with a
59 few years of data.
</p>
61 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
62 collector broke in Debian. The scripts in
63 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/
</tt> were no longer executed. I
64 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
65 know. The issue is reported as
66 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #
818649</a> against
67 pm-utils. I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
68 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
69 disconnected. With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
70 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.
</p>
72 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
74 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
</a>
75 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
76 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
77 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github
</a>.
78 As always, patches are very welcome.
</p>
84 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
89 <div class=
"padding"></div>
93 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian
</a>
99 <p>Back in September, I blogged about
100 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
101 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery
</a>, and
102 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced). I
103 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
104 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
105 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
106 package in Debian
</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
107 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
108 fixed instead. I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
109 hoped someone would step in and fix it. But no-one did.
</p>
111 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
112 hands. The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
113 battery stats (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github
</a>) and part of the team maintaining
114 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
115 able to collect battery status using the
<tt>/sys/class/power_supply/
</tt>
116 information provided by the Linux kernel. If you install the
117 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
118 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
119 status of the battery. The source package build and work just fine in
120 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
121 tested). The default graph you get for that system look like this:
</p>
123 <p align=
"center"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width=
"70%" align=
"center"></p>
125 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
126 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
127 about the battery. The scripts are merged into the upstream
128 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
129 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way. Will have to test a
130 bit more before I make a new release.
</p>
132 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
133 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
134 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
137 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
138 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
139 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian
</a> and
141 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github
</a>.
142 I would love some help to improve the system further.
</p>
148 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
153 <div class=
"padding"></div>
157 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically
</a>
163 <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
164 details. And one of the details is the content of the
165 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
166 the code in the package in question, preferably in
167 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
168 readable DEP5 format
</a>.
</p>
170 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
171 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
172 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters. So getting it right
173 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
174 both you and the ftpmasters some work.. Today, while trying to figure
175 out what was wrong with
176 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
177 zfsonlinux copyright file
</a>, I decided to spend some time on
178 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
179 semi-automatically.
</p>
181 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
182 file based on the code in the source package,
183 <tt><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake
</a></tt>
184 and
<tt><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme
</a></tt>. I'm
185 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
186 create a sensible draft file. As far as I can tell, none of them can
187 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
188 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload. I found the debmake
190 <a href=
"http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
191 blog posts from
2014</a>.
193 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
196 debmake -cc
> debian/copyright
199 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
200 this might not be the best option.
</p>
202 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
204 <a href=
"https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
205 blog post from
2015</a>. To generate using cme, use the 'update
206 dpkg-copyright' option:
209 cme update dpkg-copyright
212 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to
213 handle UTF-
8 names better than debmake.
</p>
215 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
216 check if the file is correct. For this I found two good options,
217 <tt>debmake -k
</tt> and
<tt>license-reconcile
</tt>. The former seem
218 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
219 ineffective blocks in the copyright file. The latter reports missing
220 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
221 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-
1.0). I suspect it is good to use both and
222 fix all issues reported by them before uploading. But I do not know
223 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
224 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.
</p>
226 <p>The devscripts tool
<tt>licensecheck
</tt> deserve mentioning. It
227 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
228 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
229 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.
</p>
231 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
232 debian/copyright file. Please let me know, or blog about it on
233 planet.debian.org.
</p>
235 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
236 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
237 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
239 <p><strong>Update
2016-
02-
20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
240 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
243 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
244 /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5
> debian/copyright.auto
247 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
248 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
249 copyright changes in the upstream source. I will try to do the same
250 with my packages in the future.
</p>
252 <p><strong>Update
2016-
02-
21</strong>: The cme author recommended
253 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
260 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
265 <div class=
"padding"></div>
269 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support
</a>
275 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system
</a>
276 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
277 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
278 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it. This can
279 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
282 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
283 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-
3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
284 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
285 unstable. In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
286 by the kernel during kernel module loading. To find the package
287 providing the example file, do like this:
</p>
290 % apt install appstream
294 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-
3.2.3.0.bin | \
295 awk '/Package:/ {print $
2}'
300 <p>See
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
301 appstream wiki
</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
302 a way appstream can use.
</p>
304 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
305 given MIME type. This is very useful when you get a file you do not
306 know how to handle. First find the mime type using
<tt>file
307 --mime-type
</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
308 it. Lets say you got an SVG file. Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
309 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:
</p>
312 % apt install appstream
316 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
317 awk '/Package:/ {print $
2}'
341 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
342 packages providing appstream metadata.
</p>
348 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
353 <div class=
"padding"></div>
357 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software
</a>
363 <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
364 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
365 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
366 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent). And if their
367 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
368 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
369 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
370 during installation). And when these programs send out information to
371 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
372 extra care is taken to not send the location. The provided
373 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
374 good and bad, depend on your point of view). What is certain, is that
375 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
376 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
377 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
380 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
382 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
383 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing. It is
384 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
385 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
386 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information. But the
387 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
388 tool to do so is called
389 <a href=
"http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py
</a>. I
390 discovered it when I read
391 <a href=
"http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
392 article about Creepy
</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
393 November
2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
394 The python program was in Debian, but
395 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
396 Debian
</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained. I
397 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
398 have time to fix it then. This Christmas I decided to finally try to
399 get Creepy operational in Debian. Now a fixed version is available in
400 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
402 <a href=
"https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream
</a>.
</p>
404 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
405 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
406 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
407 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
408 these services. Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
409 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
410 days it is impossible. This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
411 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
412 information to them about your search interests. This should be taken
413 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
414 about yourself with the services.
</p>
416 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
417 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
418 of Norway. One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
419 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
420 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
421 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
422 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
423 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
424 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
425 things. A similar technique have been
426 <a href=
"http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
427 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine
</a>, and it is both a powerful
428 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
429 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
432 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
433 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
434 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
435 python-requests-toolbelt).
</p>
438 <a href=
"https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
439 screenshots.debian.net
</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
440 Creepy program in Debian.)
</p>
446 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
451 <div class=
"padding"></div>
455 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe
</a>
461 <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
462 <a href=
"https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
463 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
464 believe a computer have a given security hole
</a> if it download a
465 security fix from a Debian mirror. This is a good reason to always
466 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
467 listening do not know which IP address to attack. In August, Richard
468 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
469 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
470 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
471 <a href=
"http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
472 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror
</a>. He
473 was not the first to propose this, as the
474 <tt><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor
</a></tt>
475 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
476 to use
<a href=
"https://www.torproject.org/">Tor
</a>, but I was not
477 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.
</p>
479 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
480 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
481 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
482 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
483 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.
</p>
485 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
486 installing
<tt>apt-transport-tor
</tt> and replacing http and https
487 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
488 of the official Debian mirror site. I recommend installing
489 <tt>etckeeper
</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
493 apt install apt-transport-tor
494 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
495 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
498 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
499 the sed commands for these too. The sed command is assuming your are
500 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror. Adjust the command (or just
501 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.
</p>
503 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later. Note that tools like
504 <tt>apt-file
</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
505 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs. For
506 <tt>apt-file
</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
507 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable. So if you
508 need a working
<tt>apt-file
</tt>, this is not for you.
</p>
510 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
511 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
512 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
513 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine. Using Tor will
514 become normal for the machine in question.
</p>
516 <p>On
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
</a>, APT
517 is set up by default to use
<tt>apt-transport-tor
</tt> when Tor is
518 enabled. It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
525 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
530 <div class=
"padding"></div>
534 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software
</a>
540 <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
541 call the car license plate numbers in those days. I would write the
542 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
543 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
544 exotic or special region codes and numbers. It was a fun game to pass
545 time, as we kids have plenty of it.
</p>
547 <p>A few days I came across
548 <a href=
"https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
549 project
</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
550 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
551 "car numbers" in a machine readable format. I've been looking for
552 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
553 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
554 number plate recognition
</a> tool only is available in the hands of
555 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
556 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I
557 discovered the developer
558 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
559 Debian
</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
560 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
563 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
564 it into Debian, where it currently
565 <a href=
"https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
566 in the NEW queue
</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.
</p>
568 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
569 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
570 surveillance system? Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
571 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
572 when number plates on my watch list are discovered. Another use case
573 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
574 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
575 car. When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
576 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
577 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway. I
578 guess for such use case it make sense. I am sure there are other use
579 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.
</p>
581 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
582 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
583 before running "debuild" to build the source. Or wait a bit until the
584 package show up in unstable.
</p>
590 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
595 <div class=
"padding"></div>
599 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian
</a>
605 <p>Around three years ago, I created
606 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
607 system
</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
608 hardware related packages. A GUI system in the isenkram package will
609 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
610 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine. The same
611 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
612 tools in the isenkram-cli package. In addition to mapping hardware,
613 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
614 install needed firmware packages automatically. The key for this
615 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
616 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
619 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
620 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
621 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
622 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
623 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
624 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
625 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
626 appstream system
</a> was announced. I got in touch and suggested to
627 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
628 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
629 Debian version of appstream.
</p>
631 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
632 and today I uploaded a new version
0.20 of isenkram adding support for
633 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages. The only
634 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
635 pymissile package. I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
636 how do add the required
637 <a href=
"https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
638 in pymissile
</a>. I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
642 <?xml
version="
1.0"
encoding="UTF-
8"?
>
644 <id
>pymissile
</id
>
645 <metadata_license
>MIT
</metadata_license
>
646 <name
>pymissile
</name
>
647 <summary
>Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
</summary
>
650 Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
651 Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
652 motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
657 <modalias
>usb:v1130p0202d*
</modalias
>
662 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
663 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
664 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel. In this case, it
665 will map to all USB devices with vendor code
1130 and product code
668 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
669 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
670 appstream files. Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
671 these files. A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
672 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
673 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use). But
674 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
675 upstream for this project is dormant.
</p>
677 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
678 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
679 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
680 package under /usr/share/appdata/. I did this by adding the following
681 line to debian/pymissile.install:
</p>
684 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
687 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
688 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
689 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
690 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
693 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
694 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-
11</a> proposal.
</p>
696 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
697 try running this command on the command line:
</p>
700 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
703 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
704 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
705 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a>.
</p>
711 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
716 <div class=
"padding"></div>
720 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust
</a>
726 <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
727 "
<a href=
"http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
728 GPL is not magic pixie dust
</a>" explain the importance of making sure
729 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
">GPL</a> is enforced.
730 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
734 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png
" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!
" align="right
" border="0" /></a></p>
737 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
739 The first step is to choose a
740 <a href="https://copyleft.org/
">copyleft</a> license for your
743 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
744 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
746 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
749 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
752 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/
">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
753 <a href="http://faif.us/
" title="Free as in Freedom
">FaiF</a>
754 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/
2015/nov/
24/
0x57/
">episode
757 <p>As the Debian Website
758 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/
794116">used</a>
759 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=
1.24&r2=
1.25">to</a>
760 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
761 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
762 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
763 software products. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
764 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
765 such licenses are not enough. With the ongoing adoption of Free
766 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
767 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
768 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always. As Karen
769 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/
" title="Free as in
771 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/
2015/nov/
24/
0x57/
">episode 0x57</a>,
772 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
773 to protect it. The reality of today's world is that legal
774 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming. With
775 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/
">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
776 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/
20151027-homepage-recovers/
">until</a>
777 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/
">Software
778 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
779 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
780 In March the SFC supported a
781 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/
2015/mar/
05/vmware-lawsuit/
">lawsuit
782 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
783 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html
">comply
784 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
785 kernel. Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
787 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/
2015/nov/
24/faif-carols-fundraiser/
">blocked
788 or cancelled their talks</a>. As a result they have decided to rely
789 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
790 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft. So the SFC has
791 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/
2015/nov/
23/
2015fundraiser/
">launched</a>
792 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
">campaign</a> to create
793 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
794 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
797 <p>If you support Free Software,
798 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/
2015/nov/
26/like-what-I-do/
">like</a>
799 what the SFC do, agree with their
800 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html
">compliance
801 principles</a>, are happy about their
802 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
">successes</a> in 2015,
803 work on a project that is an SFC
804 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/
">member</a> and or
805 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
806 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA
">Christopher
808 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/
2015/nov/
24/faif-carols-fundraiser/
">Carol
810 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/
2015/
11/
25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/
">Jono
811 Bacon</a>, myself and
812 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters
">others</a> in
814 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
">supporter</a>. For the
815 next week your donation will be
816 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/
2015/nov/
27/black-friday/
">matched</a>
817 by an anonymous donor. Please also consider asking your employer to
818 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC. Don't forget to
819 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
820 social media accounts.</p>
824 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
825 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself. Perhaps you should be a
832 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/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>.
837 <div class="padding
"></div>
841 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html
">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
847 <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
848 set it up properly. I wanted to generate it offline and have it
849 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp
">a OpenPGP
850 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
851 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever. But
852 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
853 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key. See
854 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2015-
11-
17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt
">the
855 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
856 the details. This is my new key:</p>
859 pub 3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/
111D6B29EE4E02F9.html
">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
860 Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1 D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
861 uid Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>
862 uid Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@debian.org>
863 sub 4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
864 sub 4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
865 sub 4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
868 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
871 <p>If you signed my old key
872 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html
">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
873 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
874 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
875 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
881 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
886 <div class="padding
"></div>
890 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html
">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
896 <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
897 But this do not last. The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
898 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
899 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
900 all the time. Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
901 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
902 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
904 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2015-
09-
24-laptop-battery-graph.png
"/>
906 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
907 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
908 by someone else. I found
909 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats</a>,
910 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
911 broken. I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
912 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
914 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/
2013/
08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
">a
915 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
917 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git
">batlog</a>, not
918 available in Debian.</p>
920 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
921 battery stats ever since. Now my
922 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
923 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
924 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity. My
925 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
930 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
932 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
933 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
935 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
936 energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
938 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
949 # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
950 # when several log processes run in parallel.
951 msg=$(printf
"%s," $(date +%s); \
952 for f in $files; do \
953 printf
"%s," $(cat $f); \
958 cd /sys/class/power_supply
961 (cd $bat && log_battery
>> "$logfile")
965 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
966 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
967 and out of hibernation and suspend. In addition, it collect a value
968 every
10 minutes. This make it possible for me know when the battery
969 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
970 The code for the Debian package
971 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
972 available on github
</a>.
</p>
974 <p>The collected log file look like this:
</p>
977 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
978 1376591133,LGC,
45N1025,Li-ion,
974,
62800000,
62160000,
39050000,
0,Discharging,
980 1443090528,LGC,
45N1025,Li-ion,
974,
4900000,
62160000,
4900000,
0,Full,
981 1443090601,LGC,
45N1025,Li-ion,
974,
4900000,
62160000,
4900000,
0,Full,
984 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
985 over time. This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
988 <p>But why is this happening? Why are my laptop batteries always
989 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
990 satellites keep working year after year. If we are to believe
991 <a href=
"http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
992 University
</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
993 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to
100%
994 all the time, but to stay below
90% of full charge most of the time.
995 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
996 <a href=
"http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
997 the charge of their batteries to
80%
</a>, with the option to charge to
998 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
999 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
1000 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
1003 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
1004 stop charging at
80%, unless requested to charge to
100% once in
1005 preparation for a longer trip? I found
1006 <a href=
"http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
1007 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
1008 80%
</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
1011 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than
100%
1012 at the start. I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
1013 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
1014 back to design capacity. And I wonder if the discharge and charge
1015 speed change over time, or if this stay the same. I did not yet try
1016 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
1017 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
1020 <p>Update
2015-
09-
24: I got a tip to install the packages
1021 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
1022 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
1023 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge
40 80' to change when charging start
1024 and stop. I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
1025 and need to be replaced. The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
1032 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1037 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1041 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback
</a>
1047 <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
1048 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback. I wish to
1049 thank every one of these. Several pointed me to the possibility of
1050 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
1051 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
1052 machine. But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
1053 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
1054 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement. If I did
1055 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
1056 using
<a href=
"http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans
</a>, but it
1057 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.
</p>
1059 <p>One tip I got was to use the
1060 <a href=
"https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint
</a> web service to
1061 compare laptop models. It seem to have more models available than
1062 prisjakt.no. Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
1063 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook
840 keyboard is not
1064 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
1065 keyboards I tested. Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
1067 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
1068 newest Thinkpad X model. The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
1069 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
1070 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
1071 <a href=
"http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net
</a>. The reports I
1072 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent. Some say the keyboard
1073 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
1074 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
1075 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
1076 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
1077 replace it. I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
1078 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230. I'm
1079 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
1080 noisy. In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
1081 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.
</p>
1083 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
1084 <a href=
"http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star
</a>, another was
1085 <a href=
"http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot
</a>.
1086 The latter look very attractive to me.
</p>
1088 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback. It help a lot
1089 as I keep looking for a replacement.
</p>
1091 <p>Update
2015-
07-
06: I was recommended to check out the
1092 <a href=
"">lapstore.de
</a> web shop for used laptops. They got several
1094 <a href=
"http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
1095 thinkpad X models
</a>, and provide one year warranty.
</p>
1101 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1106 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1110 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years
</a>
1116 <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
1117 replacement soon. The left
5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
1118 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
1119 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
1122 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
1124 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
1125 described them in
2013</a>. The last time I bought a laptop, I had
1127 <a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no
</a>
1128 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
1129 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually. Three button mouse
1130 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
1131 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook
820 G1 and
1132 G2) lack three mouse buttons). It is also unclear to me how good the
1133 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are. I hope Lenovo have not messed up
1134 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
1135 deteriorated since X41.
</p>
1137 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
1138 seem sensible to me? Are there better services around to search the
1139 set of available laptops for features? Please send me an email if you
1140 have suggestions.
</p>
1142 <p>Update
2015-
07-
23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
1143 <a href=
"http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
1144 of endorsed hardware
</a>, which is useful background information.
</p>
1150 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1155 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1159 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie
</a>
1165 <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1166 sysvinit as its boot system by default. But how can one keep using
1167 sysvinit in Jessie? It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1169 <a href=
"http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1171 <a href=
"http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1174 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1175 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1176 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit
</tt> with this content before
1179 <p><blockquote><pre>
1180 Package: systemd-sysv
1181 Pin: release o=Debian
1183 </pre></blockquote><p>
1185 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1186 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1187 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1188 systemd as a default boot system. The end result should be that the
1189 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.
</p>
1191 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1192 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1193 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1194 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot. Either by
1195 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1196 preseed file used. First, the kernel command line argument:
1198 <p><blockquote><pre>
1199 preseed/
late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1200 </pre></blockquote><p>
1202 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:
</p>
1204 <p><blockquote><pre>
1205 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1206 </pre></blockquote><p>
1208 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1209 the sysvinit-core package.
</p>
1211 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1212 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1213 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1214 devices show up during boot. But on the other hand, the new default
1215 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1216 Jessie is released.
</p>
1218 <p>Update
2014-
11-
26: Inspired by
1219 <ahref=
"https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1220 blog post by Torsten Glaser
</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1227 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>.
1232 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1236 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4
</a>
1242 <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1243 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1244 democracy. But this right is under serious attack these days.
</p>
1246 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1247 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1248 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1249 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor. Such SMTP option would be
1250 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1251 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1252 to the people peeking on the wire. I
1253 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1254 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October
</a> and got a
1255 lot of useful feedback and suggestions. It also became obvious to me
1256 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1257 documented by Johannes Berg as early as
2006, and both
1258 <a href=
"https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1259 Mailpile
</a> and
<a href=
"http://dee.su/cables">the Cables
</a> systems
1260 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.
</p>
1262 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1263 providing the SMTP protocol on port
25, and use email addresses
1264 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion. With such addresses
1265 the connections to port
25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1266 go to the correct SMTP server. To do this, one need to configure the
1267 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1268 emails for this .onion domain. To learn more about Exim configuration
1269 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1270 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1271 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian. Getting it to work
1272 were fairly easy, and
1273 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1274 source code for the Debian package
</a> is available from github. I
1275 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1276 useful approach.
</p>
1278 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1279 mail system installed (or run
<tt>apt-get purge exim4-config
</tt> to
1280 get rid of exim4). Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1281 above, build the deb and install it on the machine. Next, run
1282 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service
</tt> and follow
1283 the instructions to get the service up and running. Restart tor and
1284 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1287 <p><blockquote><pre>
1288 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1289 --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1290 </pre></blockquote></p>
1292 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor. Replace the email
1293 address with your own address to test your server. :)
</p>
1295 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1296 easier and more automatic. Especially the tor setup need more work.
1297 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1298 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1299 architecture independent. It would probably also make the code easier
1300 to review. The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1301 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd. It would be better if
1302 no daemon and no socket is needed. I suspect it is possible to get
1303 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1304 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1307 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1308 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1315 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
1320 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1324 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software
</a>
1330 <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1331 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1332 operate. First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1333 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1334 and various options for each email address. This take a while for
1335 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1336 job as a list moderator. But there is a quick alternative,
1337 <a href=
"http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1338 listadmin program
</a>. It allow you to check lists for new messages
1339 to moderate in a fraction of a second. Here is a test run on two
1340 lists I recently took over:
</p>
1342 <p><blockquote><pre>
1343 % time listadmin xiph
1344 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1345 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1351 </pre></blockquote></p>
1353 <p>In
1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1354 there are no message in the moderation queue. Every morning I
1355 currently moderate
68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1356 minutes. When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1357 ago, there were
400 emails waiting in the moderator queue. It took me
1358 less than
15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1362 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1363 package
</a> from Debian and create a file
<tt>~/.listadmin.ini
</tt>
1364 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:
</p>
1366 <p><blockquote><pre>
1367 username username@example.org
1370 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1373 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1374 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1377 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1378 </pre></blockquote></p>
1380 <p>There are other options to set as well. Check the manual page to
1381 learn the details.
</p>
1383 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1384 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1385 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1386 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:
</p>
1388 <p><blockquote><pre>
1389 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=
0 listadmin
1390 </pre></blockquote></p>
1392 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1393 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1394 initial screen dump (the xiph argument). Using an argument, only
1395 lists matching the argument string will be processed. This make it
1396 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1399 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of
68
1400 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1401 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1402 time I could spend elsewhere over the years. It truly is nice free
1405 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1406 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1407 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1409 <p>Update
2014-
10-
27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1410 configuration example. Also, I've been told that the
1411 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=
0 setting do not work for everyone. Not
1418 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
1423 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1427 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation
</a>
1433 <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1434 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1435 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1436 Normally something more is needed. But thanks to
1437 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1438 package
</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1439 to do this using simple preseeding.
</p>
1441 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1442 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1443 the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space
1444 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1447 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1448 values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1449 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1450 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by
1451 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1452 isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1453 for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1454 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1455 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1456 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.
</p>
1458 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1459 most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding
1460 the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1461 hardware it is the only option in Debian.
</p>
1463 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1464 firmware installed automatically by the installer:
</p>
1466 <p><blockquote><pre>
1467 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1468 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1469 </pre></blockquote></p>
1471 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1472 both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also
1473 do not work well, so use version
0.15 or later. Installing both
1474 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1475 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1476 and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by
1477 default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is
1478 implemented in the package currently in unstable.
</p>
1480 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1481 this recipe work for you. :)
</p>
1483 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and
1484 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1485 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the
1486 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there
1487 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):
</p>
1489 <p><blockquote><pre>
1490 Task: isenkram-packages
1492 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1493 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1495 Test-new-install: show show
1497 Packages: for-current-hardware
1499 Task: isenkram-firmware
1501 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1502 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1503 packages are proposed.
1504 Test-new-install: mark show
1506 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1507 </pre></blockquote></p>
1509 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1510 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1511 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a
1512 list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1513 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1515 <p><blockquote><pre>
1518 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1520 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1521 </pre></blockquote></p>
1523 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1524 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)
</p>
1526 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1527 installed, run
<tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1528 --new-install
</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1531 <p><a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> will be
1532 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1533 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.
</p>
1539 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin
</a>.
1544 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1548 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo
</a>
1554 <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
1555 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1556 with Linux kernel
3.2.0-
23 (ie probably version
12.04 LTS) was stuck
1557 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:
</p>
1559 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1561 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1562 about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
1563 <a href=
"http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal
</a>.
</p>
1569 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1574 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1578 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version
0.17 is ready
</a>
1584 <p>The
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project
</a>
1585 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1586 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1587 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1590 <p>I just wrapped up
1591 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1592 new lsdvd release
</a>, available in git or from
1593 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1594 download page
</a>. This is the changelog dated
2014-
10-
03 for version
1599 <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks
</li>
1600 <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1601 non-existant, to work around additional copy protection
</li>
1602 <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles
</li>
1603 <li>Fix pallete display of first entry
</li>
1604 <li>Fix include orders
</li>
1605 <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway
</li>
1606 <li>Fix the chapter count
</li>
1607 <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1608 the palette size is the same.
</li>
1609 <li>Fix array printing.
</li>
1610 <li>Correct subsecond calculations.
</li>
1611 <li>Add sector information to the output format.
</li>
1612 <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1613 with more GCC compiler warnings.
</li>
1617 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1618 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1619 project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)
</p>
1625 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
1630 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1634 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer
</a>
1640 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1641 project
</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1642 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1643 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1644 boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1645 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1646 to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1647 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1648 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1650 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1651 status
</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1652 work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1653 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
1654 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.
</p>
1656 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1657 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp
</a>,
1658 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http
</a>
1660 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-
1.iso).
1661 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1662 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1663 install with some tweaking.
</p>
1665 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1666 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run
</p>
1668 <p><blockquote><pre>
1669 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1670 </pre></blockquote></p>
1672 <p>and add 'exit
0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1673 optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1674 and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1675 due to a known bug in eatmydata.
</p>
1677 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1678 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
1679 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1682 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1683 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1684 education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1685 or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1686 metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1687 graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
1688 once the education-tasks package version
1.801 enter testing in two
1691 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1692 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1693 update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1694 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1695 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
1696 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
1697 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1698 provided in bug
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#
702711</a>.
1699 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.
</p>
1701 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1702 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1703 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.
</p>
1709 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>.
1714 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1718 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool
</a>
1724 <p>I use the
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool
</a>
1725 to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
1726 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1727 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
1728 any new development since
2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1729 its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1730 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1731 project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
1732 get
<a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1733 into Debian
</a>. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1734 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1735 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1736 over. And yesterday, I became project admin.
</p>
1738 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1739 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1740 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1741 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1742 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1743 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
1744 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1745 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source
</a> and join
1746 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1753 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
1758 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1762 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert
</a>
1768 <p>The
<a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> installer could be
1769 a lot quicker. When we install more than
2000 packages in
1770 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> using
1771 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1772 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1773 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #
613428</a> about too
1774 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1775 responsible for unpacking the binary packages. Other parts (like code
1776 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1777 installation. All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1778 me. If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1779 to salvage the half installed system. So the failure sync-ing is
1780 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1781 relevant while the installer is running.
</p>
1783 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1784 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1785 change the code in several packages. The idea is not new, but I have
1786 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before. It
1787 depend on the small and clever package
1788 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata
</a>, which
1789 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1790 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1791 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly. Instead of
1792 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1793 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1794 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1795 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1796 "eatmydata
$program
$@", to get the same effect.
1797 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1798 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.
</p>
1800 <p>The effect was stunning. In my first test it reduced the running
1801 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from
64 to less than
44
1802 minutes (
20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1803 Latitude D505 machine. I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1804 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1805 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1806 installation. As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1807 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1808 installation. I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1809 and got these results. The time measured is the time stamp in
1810 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1811 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1812 yourself. In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1813 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1819 <th>Machine/setup
</th>
1820 <th>Original tasksel
</th>
1821 <th>Optimised tasksel
</th>
1826 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE
</td>
1827 <td>64 min (
07:
46-
08:
50)
</td>
1828 <td><44 min (
11:
27-
12:
11)
</td>
1829 <td>>20 min
18%
</td>
1833 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE
</td>
1834 <td>57 min (
08:
48-
09:
45)
</td>
1835 <td>34 min (
07:
43-
08:
17)
</td>
1840 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal
</td>
1841 <td>22 min (
10:
37-
10:
59)
</td>
1842 <td>11 min (
11:
16-
11:
27)
</td>
1847 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal
</td>
1848 <td>6 min (
08:
19-
08:
25)
</td>
1849 <td>4 min (
08:
04-
08:
08)
</td>
1854 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE
</td>
1855 <td>19 min (
09:
21-
09:
40)
</td>
1856 <td>15 min (
10:
25-
10:
40)
</td>
1862 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1863 time is spent downloading packages. The connection to the Internet
1864 was
100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1865 significant factor in the measurement. Download typically took a few
1866 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1869 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1870 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1871 Installer
</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1872 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1873 installation. I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1874 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1875 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1876 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO. The
1877 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1878 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i. If the code is
1879 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1880 for the entire installation.
</p>
1882 <p>I've implemented this in the
1883 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install
</a>
1884 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1885 Debian Edu installation. If you want to test this yourself, you can
1886 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb). One shell script
1887 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:
</p>
1889 <p><blockquote><pre>
1892 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1894 logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1897 logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1899 override_install() {
1900 apt-install eatmydata || true
1901 if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1902 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1904 # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1905 if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1906 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1907 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1909 chmod
755 /target$file.edu
1910 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1911 --rename --quiet --add $file
1912 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1914 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1918 error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1923 </pre></blockquote></p>
1925 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1926 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1928 <p><blockquote><pre>
1930 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1932 logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1934 remove_install_override() {
1935 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1937 if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1939 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1940 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1943 error "Missing divert for $file."
1946 sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1949 remove_install_override
1950 </pre></blockquote></p>
1952 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1953 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1954 finish-install.d scripts.
</p>
1956 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1957 Debian installer too? I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1958 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough. It also
1959 depend on the side effects of the change. I'm not aware of any, but I
1960 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1961 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1962 fsync() having effect? Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1963 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1966 <p>Update
2014-
09-
24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1967 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1968 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #
702711</a>. An updated
1969 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.
</p>
1971 <p>Update
2014-
10-
17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1972 the optimization work again. And I have discovered that the
1973 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1974 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package. See
1975 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.
</p>
1977 <p>Update
2014-
11-
11: Unfortunately, a new
1978 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #
765738</a> in eatmydata only
1979 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1980 optimization again. If
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1981 request
768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.
</p>
1987 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>.
1992 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1996 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net
</a>
2002 <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
2003 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> about
2004 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
2005 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net
</a>, and was very happy to
2006 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
2007 use when looking for peoples public key. So far I have used
2008 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
2009 were misbehaving, but those days are ended. The servers I have used
2010 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable. I hope
2011 those problems are gone now.
</p>
2013 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
2014 <a href=
"https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net
</a> service
2015 there is a pool of more than
100 keyservers which are checked every
2016 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date. It must be
2017 better than what I have used so far. :)
</p>
2019 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
2020 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
2021 not seem to be used in Debian. Perhaps it should?
</p>
2023 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
2026 <p><blockquote><pre>
2027 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
2028 </pre></blockquote></p>
2030 <p>With GnuPG version
2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
2031 entries in DNS. Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
2032 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
2033 keyserver automatically should their need it:
</p>
2035 <p><blockquote><pre>
2036 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
2037 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record
0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
2039 </pre></blockquote></p>
2042 <a href=
"http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
2043 HKP lookup protocol
</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
2044 very happy. It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
2045 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
2046 another key. Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
2047 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
2048 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
2049 This is as far as I can tell not possible today. Perhaps something
2050 for a future version of the protocol?
</p>
2056 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
2061 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2065 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook
</a>
2071 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2072 project
</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
2073 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
2074 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation. This text is about how the
2075 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.
</p>
2077 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
2078 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
2079 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
2080 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
2081 in sync. And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
2082 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
2083 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
2084 edit the documentation using a web browser. We also want it to be
2085 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
2086 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
2087 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
2090 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
2091 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
2092 wiki
</a>, as several wiki pages written in English. It consist of one
2093 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
2094 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
2095 chapters together into one large web page (aka
2096 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
2097 AllInOne page
</a>). The AllInOne page is the one used for further
2098 processing and translations. Thanks to the fact that the
2099 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin
</a> installation on
2100 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
2101 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format
</a>, we can fetch
2102 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
2103 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
2104 manual. This process also download images and transform image
2105 references to use the locally downloaded images. The generated
2106 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
2107 using the
<tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual
</tt> program, and the
2108 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
2109 a handfull of images. The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
2110 and epub versions of the English manual. This is the basic step of
2111 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
2112 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
2113 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.
</p>
2115 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us. We want translated
2116 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
2117 track the English original. For this we use the
2118 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml
</a> package,
2119 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
2120 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
2121 translation tools used by those translating free software. The pot
2122 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
2123 files), which the translations update with the native language
2124 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
2125 original. The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
2126 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
2127 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
2128 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml). This translated (or partly
2129 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
2130 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
2131 of the documentation.
</p>
2133 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files. We
2135 <a href=
"http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize
</a>,
2136 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
2137 <a href=
"http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle
</a> or
2138 <a href=
"https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex
</a>. All we care about
2139 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository. Updated
2140 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
2141 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
2142 against the debian-edu-doc package
</a>.
</p>
2144 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
2145 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
2146 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
2147 this regard). For this we transform the original PNG images to the
2148 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2149 translated images by storing translated versions in
2150 images/$LANGUAGECODE/. I am a bit unsure about the details here. The
2151 package maintainers know more.
</p>
2153 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2154 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2155 of the documentation packages on the web
</a>. See for example the
2156 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2157 PDF version
</a> or the
2158 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2159 HTML version
</a>. We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2160 but perhaps it will be done in the future.
</p>
2162 <p>To learn more, check out
2163 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2164 debian-edu-doc package
</a>,
2165 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2166 manual on the wiki
</a> and
2167 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2168 translation instructions
</a> in the manual.
</p>
2174 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2179 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2183 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram
0.7)
</a>
2189 <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2190 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2191 So I implemented one, using
2192 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2193 package
</a>. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2194 run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option,
2195 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)". When you
2196 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2197 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.
<p>
2199 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2200 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2201 packages to install. The first part is in
2202 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc
</tt> and look like
2205 <p><blockquote><pre>
2208 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2209 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2211 Test-new-install: mark show
2213 Packages: for-current-hardware
2214 </pre></blockquote></p>
2216 <p>The second part is in
2217 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware
</tt> and look like
2220 <p><blockquote><pre>
2225 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2227 </pre></blockquote></p>
2229 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2230 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2231 have installed on our machines. I've not been able to find a way to
2232 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2233 before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful,
2234 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.
</p>
2236 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2237 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2238 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2239 database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database
2240 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2241 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#
719837</a> and
2242 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#
730704</a>). The cause is in
2243 the python-apt code (bug
2244 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#
745487</a>), but using a
2245 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2246 reduce the memory leak from ~
30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2247 around
2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop
2248 daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version
0.7 uploaded to
2251 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2252 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2253 use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper
2254 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2255 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-
11</a>, and
2256 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2257 project
</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation. I
2258 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2259 start using the information when it is ready.
</p>
2261 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2262 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2263 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2264 package
</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2266 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2267 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a> for details on the notation. I expect
2268 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2269 moment I got no better place to store it.
</p>
2275 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
2280 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2284 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid
</a>
2290 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2291 project
</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2292 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2293 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2294 encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
2295 today a major mile stone was reached.
</p>
2297 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2298 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
2299 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2300 during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
2301 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2302 Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2303 build everything directly from Debian. :)
</p>
2305 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2306 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>,
2307 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth
</a>,
2308 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite
</a>,
2309 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor
</a>,
2310 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>,
2311 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud
</a> and
2312 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq
</a>. There
2313 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
2314 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
2315 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2316 the manual
</a> and help us improve it.
</p>
2318 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2319 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2323 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2324 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2326 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2328 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2331 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2332 devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2333 details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
2334 make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2335 virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2336 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
2337 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2338 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.
</p>
2340 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2341 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2342 the preseed values:
</p>
2345 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
2348 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2351 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2352 systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
2353 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
2354 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2355 during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
2356 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2357 be run from the plinth web interface.
</p>
2359 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2360 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2361 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2362 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
2363 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2364 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
2370 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
2375 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2379 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software
</a>
2385 <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2386 solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
2387 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2388 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2389 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2390 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2391 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2392 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
2393 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2394 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
2395 I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
2396 have looked at a system called
2397 <a href=
"https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL
</a>, a locally
2398 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.
</p>
2400 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2401 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2402 Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
2403 providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2404 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
2405 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2406 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2407 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2408 while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
2409 have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
2410 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2411 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2412 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.
</p>
2414 <p>It is simple to use. I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2415 package is included already. So to get started, run
<tt>apt-get
2416 install s3ql
</tt>. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
2417 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2418 <a href=
"https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2419 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service
</a>, because I trust the laws
2420 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2421 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2422 in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
2423 <a href=
"http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2424 Filesystem for HPC Storage
</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2425 Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2426 the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
2427 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2430 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2431 system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
2432 file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2433 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2434 I'll refer to it as
<tt>bucket-name
</tt> below. In addition, one need
2435 the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
2436 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2438 <p><blockquote><pre>
2440 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
2441 backend-login: API-login
2442 backend-password: API-password
2443 fs-passphrase: local-password
2444 </pre></blockquote></p>
2446 <p>I create my local passphrase using
<tt>pwget
50</tt> or similar,
2447 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2448 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2449 details and password to create it:
</p>
2451 <p><blockquote><pre>
2452 # mkdir -m
700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2453 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2454 --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
2455 Enter backend login:
2456 Enter backend password:
2457 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2458 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2459 Enter encryption password:
2460 Confirm encryption password:
2461 Generating random encryption key...
2462 Creating metadata tables...
2472 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2473 Wrote
0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2474 #
</pre></blockquote></p>
2476 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2478 <p><blockquote><pre>
2479 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2480 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
2481 Using
4 upload threads.
2482 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2492 Mounting filesystem...
2494 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2495 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1.0T
0 1.0T
0% /s3ql
2497 </pre></blockquote></p>
2499 <p>The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
2500 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2501 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2502 running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2503 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2504 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2506 <p><blockquote><pre>
2509 </pre></blockquote></p>
2511 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2512 correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
2513 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2514 mounted" flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
2517 <p><blockquote><pre>
2518 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
2519 Using cached metadata.
2520 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2521 Checking DB integrity...
2522 Creating temporary extra indices...
2523 Checking lost+found...
2524 Checking cached objects...
2525 Checking names (refcounts)...
2526 Checking contents (names)...
2527 Checking contents (inodes)...
2528 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2529 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2530 Checking objects (backend)...
2531 ..processed
5000 objects so far..
2532 ..processed
10000 objects so far..
2533 ..processed
15000 objects so far..
2534 Checking objects (sizes)...
2535 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2536 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2537 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2538 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2539 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2540 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2541 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2542 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2543 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2544 Checking directory reachability...
2545 Checking unix conventions...
2546 Checking referential integrity...
2547 Dropping temporary indices...
2548 Backing up old metadata...
2558 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2559 Wrote
0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2561 </pre></blockquote></p>
2563 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2564 quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
2565 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2566 house. Uploading
685 MiB with a
100 MiB cache gave me
305 kiB/s,
2567 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2568 Debian installation ISO gave me
610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2569 Both were measured using
<tt>dd
</tt>. So for me, the bottleneck is my
2570 network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
2571 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2574 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2575 time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2578 <p><blockquote><pre>
2579 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2580 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
2581 Using
8 upload threads.
2582 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2584 </pre></blockquote></p>
2586 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2587 metadata is uploaded once every
24 hour by default. To ensure the
2588 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2589 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2592 <p><blockquote><pre>
2593 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2594 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2596 </pre></blockquote></p>
2598 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2599 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2600 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2603 <p><blockquote><pre>
2605 Directory entries:
9141
2608 Total data size:
22049.38 MB
2609 After de-duplication:
21955.46 MB (
99.57% of total)
2610 After compression:
21877.28 MB (
99.22% of total,
99.64% of de-duplicated)
2611 Database size:
2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2612 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2614 </pre></blockquote></p>
2616 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2617 storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2618 <a href=
"https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud
</a>,
2619 <a href=
"http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive
</a>,
2620 <a href=
"http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces
</a>,
2621 <a href=
"http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace
</a> and
2622 <a href=
"http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud
</A>. The latter even
2623 accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
2624 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2625 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2628 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2629 and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
2630 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2631 science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
2633 "
<a href=
"http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2634 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2635 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach
</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2636 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2637 and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.</p>
2639 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2640 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2641 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2642 it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
2643 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html
">my
2644 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2645 no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
2646 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2648 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2649 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2650 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/
">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2651 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
2652 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2653 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2654 only read from it.</p>
2656 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2657 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2658 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2664 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software
">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
2669 <div class="padding
"></div>
2673 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html
">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
2679 <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
">Freedombox
2680 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2681 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2682 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2683 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
2684 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2687 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2688 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2689 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2690 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2691 file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2692 where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
2693 the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
2694 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2696 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap
</a>
2697 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2700 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2702 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2703 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2705 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2708 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2709 devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2710 want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to
<a
2711 href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2712 vmdebootstrap
</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2715 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2716 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2717 the preseed values:
</p>
2720 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
2723 <p>But note that due to
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2724 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie
</a>, the installer will
2725 currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
2726 '
<tt>apt-cdrom ident
</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2727 installation will get the installation going. This affect all
2728 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.
</p>
2730 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2731 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2732 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2733 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
2734 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2735 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
2741 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
2746 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2750 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release
1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)
</a>
2756 <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2757 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2758 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>. I called the project
2759 ng-utils, and it has served me well. I placed the project under the
2760 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer
</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2761 repository. But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2762 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2763 proper home since then.
</p>
2765 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2766 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2767 a proper source control system. I applied for a project on
2768 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth
</a>, but did not have time
2769 to follow up on it. Until today. :)
</p>
2771 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2772 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2773 history of the project. I published all release tarballs and imported
2774 them into the git repository. As the project is really stable and not
2775 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2776 release and call it
1.0. Visit the new project home on
2777 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/
</a>
2778 if you want to check it out. The new version is also uploaded into
2779 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable
</a>.
</p>
2785 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2790 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2794 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd
</a>
2800 <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2801 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2802 boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
2803 <a href=
"https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
2804 Google Summer of Code work
</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
2805 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
2806 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2807 <a href=
"http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz
</a>,
2808 and started it using virt-manager.
</p>
2810 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2811 password) was to get the network operational. I followed
2812 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
2813 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page
</a> and ran these
2814 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2815 kvm internal DHCP server:
</p>
2817 <p><blockquote><pre>
2818 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2819 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $
2}')
2820 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $
2}')
2822 </pre></blockquote></p>
2824 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2825 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2826 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.
</p>
2828 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2829 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2830 set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2831 compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
2834 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2837 <p><blockquote><pre>
2838 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list
<<EOF
2839 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2842 apt-get dist-upgrade
2843 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2844 sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2845 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2846 </pre></blockquote></p>
2848 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2849 <tt>reboot-hurd
</tt> instead of just
<tt>reboot
</tt>, as there is not
2850 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2851 'reboot' command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2852 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2853 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2854 start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
2855 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2858 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2859 fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2860 figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2861 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
2862 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2863 adding this repository to the machine:
</p>
2865 <p><blockquote><pre>
2866 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list
<<EOF
2867 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2869 </pre></blockquote></p>
2871 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2872 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2873 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2874 BTS. This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:
</p>
2876 <p><blockquote><pre>
2877 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2878 i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2879 i gdb - GNU Debugger
2880 i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
2881 i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
2882 i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2883 i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2884 i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2885 i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2886 i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2887 i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2888 i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2889 i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2890 i xorg - X.Org X Window System
2891 i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
2892 i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2894 </pre></blockquote></p>
2896 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2897 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2898 the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
2899 command line stuff.
<p>
2905 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>.
2910 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2914 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release
0.16</a>
2920 <p><a href=
"http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity
</a> is a nice tool to
2921 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2922 analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2923 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2924 the source. The company behind it provide
2925 <a href=
"https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
2926 a community service
</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2927 already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2928 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2929 <a href=
"http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash
</a> and
2930 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool
</a>
2931 projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
2932 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2933 check, and decided to
<a href=
"http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
2934 checking of the chrpath project
</a>. It was
2935 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
2936 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2937 error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2938 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2939 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2940 the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
2941 <a href=
"https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2942 mailing list for the chrpath developers
</a>, I decided it was time to
2943 publish a new release. These are the release notes:
</p>
2945 <p>New in
0.16 released
2014-
01-
14:
</p>
2949 <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.
</li>
2950 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.
</li>
2951 <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.
</li>
2956 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2957 new version
0.16 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
2958 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
2959 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2960 include a test suite check.
</p>
2966 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2971 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2975 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release
0.15</a>
2981 <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2982 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2983 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2984 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2985 compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
2986 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2987 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc
64-bit Little Endian) he
2988 is working on. I checked the
2989 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian
</a>,
2990 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu
</a> and
2991 <a href=
"https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora
</a>
2992 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2993 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2994 These are the release notes:
</p>
2996 <p>New in
0.15 released
2013-
11-
24:
</p>
3000 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
3001 with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
3004 <li>Updated README with current URLs.
</li>
3006 <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
3007 Matthias Klose.
</li>
3009 <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
3010 Petr Machata found in Fedora.
</li>
3012 <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
3013 .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
3014 Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.
</li>
3019 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3020 new version
0.15 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
3021 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
3022 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3023 include a testsuite check.
</p>
3029 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3034 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3038 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog
</a>
3044 <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
3045 <a href=
"http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
3046 init.d scripts
</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
3047 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
3048 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:
</p>
3051 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
3054 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
3055 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
3056 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
3057 # Default-Start:
2 3 4 5
3058 # Default-Stop:
0 1 6
3059 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
3060 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
3061 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
3062 # used as a drop-in replacement.
3064 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
3065 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
3068 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
3069 script was
137 lines, and the above is just
15 lines, most of it meta
3072 <p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
3073 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
3078 # Define LSB log_* functions.
3079 # Depend on lsb-base (
>=
3.2-
14) to ensure that this file is present
3080 # and status_of_proc is working.
3081 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
3084 # Function that starts the daemon/service
3090 #
0 if daemon has been started
3091 #
1 if daemon was already running
3092 #
2 if daemon could not be started
3093 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test
> /dev/null \
3095 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
3098 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
3099 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
3100 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
3104 # Function that stops the daemon/service
3109 #
0 if daemon has been stopped
3110 #
1 if daemon was already stopped
3111 #
2 if daemon could not be stopped
3112 # other if a failure occurred
3113 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/
30/KILL/
5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3115 [ "$RETVAL" =
2 ] && return
2
3116 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
3117 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
3118 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
3119 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
3120 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
3121 # sleep for some time.
3122 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=
0/
30/KILL/
5 --exec $DAEMON
3123 [ "$?" =
2 ] && return
2
3124 # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
3130 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
3134 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3135 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3136 # then implement that here.
3138 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal
1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3143 scriptbasename="$(basename $
1)"
3144 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3145 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3153 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3154 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3156 # Exit if the package is not installed
3157 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit
0
3159 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3160 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3162 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3167 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3170 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
3171 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
3175 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3178 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
3179 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
3183 status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit
0 || exit $?
3185 #reload|force-reload)
3187 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3188 # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3190 #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3194 restart|force-reload)
3196 # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3197 # 'force-reload' alias
3199 log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3206 1) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Old process is still running
3207 *) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Failed to start
3217 echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}"
>&
2
3225 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3226 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3227 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
3228 optimize it nor make it more robust either.
</p>
3230 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3231 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3232 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3233 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
3234 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.
</p>
3240 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>.
3245 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3249 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian
</a>
3255 <p><a href=
"http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol
</a> for
3256 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3257 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3258 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3259 missing in Debian. The
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3260 for a package
</a> was from
2012-
04-
10 with no progress since
3261 2013-
04-
01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3262 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3263 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
3264 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3265 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3266 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.
</p>
3268 <p>The source is now available from
3269 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary
</a>.
</p>
3275 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3280 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3284 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images
</a>
3291 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap
</a>
3292 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
3293 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3294 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3295 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3296 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi
</a>, as part
3297 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3298 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3299 project
</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3300 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3301 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3304 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3305 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3306 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3307 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3308 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3309 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3310 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi
</a>. First, the
3311 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler
</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3312 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3313 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
3314 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
3315 two new options
<tt>--bootsize size
</tt> and
<tt>--boottype
3316 fstype
</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3317 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3318 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a
<tt>--variant
3319 variant
</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3320 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
3321 <tt>--no-extlinux
</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3322 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3323 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
3324 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3326 <a href=
"http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3327 upstream project page
</a>.
</p>
3329 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3330 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3331 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3336 set -e # Exit on first error
3339 cat
<<EOF
> etc/apt/sources.list
3340 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3342 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
3343 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3344 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3345 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3346 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3347 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3348 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3349 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3352 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3353 to build the image:
</p>
3356 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3359 --distribution jessie \
3360 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3369 --root-password raspberry \
3370 --hostname raspberrypi \
3371 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3372 --customize `pwd`/customize \
3374 --package git-core \
3375 --package binutils \
3376 --package ca-certificates \
3381 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3382 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3383 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3384 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
3385 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3386 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3387 using a non-free binary blob.
</p>
3389 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3390 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
3391 build dependency list.
</p>
3393 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3394 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3395 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
3396 than
<a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian
</a> based images.
</p>
3402 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>.
3407 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3411 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway
</a>
3417 <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3418 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3421 <p>Via
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
3422 Project News for
2013-
10-
14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
3423 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3424 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
3425 to match
<a href=
"http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
3426 earmarked
</a> for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
3427 hope you will to. :)
</p>
3429 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3430 create
<a href=
"https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3431 documentaries about the excessive spying
</a> on every Internet user that
3432 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I've already
3433 donated. Are you next?
</p>
3435 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3436 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3437 statement under the heading
3438 <a href=
"http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3439 Access
</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3440 Norwegian government. So far
499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
3447 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
3452 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3456 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning
</a>
3462 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3463 project
</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3464 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
3465 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.
</p>
3469 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3470 2,
5 minute marketing film
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
3472 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3473 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
3475 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3476 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3477 Web
2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting
2010</a>
3480 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem
2011
3481 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
3483 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3484 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
3486 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3487 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3488 York City in
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
3490 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3491 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in
2012</a>
3494 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3495 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat,
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
3497 <li><a href=
"https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3498 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem
2013</a> (FOSDEM)
</li>
3500 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3501 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3502 2013</a> (Youtube)
</li>
3506 <p>A larger list is available from
3507 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3508 Freedombox Wiki
</a>.
</p>
3510 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3511 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3512 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3513 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3514 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3515 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3516 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
3517 us on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3518 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)
</a> and
3519 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3520 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
3526 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
3531 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3535 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi
</a>
3541 <p>I was introduced to the
3542 <a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project
</a>
3543 in
2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3544 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3545 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
3546 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3547 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
3548 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3549 control over their own basic infrastructure.
</p>
3551 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3552 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3553 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3554 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3555 actually started working on the project a while back.
</p>
3557 <p>The
<a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3558 Debian initiative
</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3559 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3560 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3561 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
3562 <a href=
"http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug
</a>,
3563 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
3564 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3565 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
3566 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker
</a>
3567 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3568 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3569 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3570 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3571 missing in Debian).
</p>
3573 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3575 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>),
3576 and a administrative web interface
3577 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth
</a> + exmachina +
3578 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3579 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>
3580 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3581 client (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat
</a>)
3582 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3583 (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd
</a>). The
3584 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3585 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
3586 this is really working yet, see
3587 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3588 project TODO
</a> for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
3589 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3590 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3591 users. I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3592 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3593 with lots of half baked features.
</p>
3595 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3596 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3599 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64
</strong></p>
3603 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.
</li>
3604 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.
</li>
3605 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3606 to the Debian installer:
<p>
3607 <pre>url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat
</a></pre></li>
3609 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3612 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3613 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.
</li>
3617 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian
</strong></p>
3621 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.
</li>
3622 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.
</li>
3623 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:
</p>
3625 deb
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox
</a> wheezy main
3627 <li><p>Run this as root:
</p>
3629 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3632 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3633 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3635 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.
</li>
3639 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3640 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3641 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3642 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
3643 short "
<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy
</tt>" away. :)</p>
3645 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3646 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3647 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3648 disable
</tt>" as root.</p>
3650 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3651 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
3652 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:
6667/%
23freedombox
">#freedombox</a> on
3653 irc.debian.org and the
3654 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
">project
3655 mailing list</a>.</p>
3657 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3658 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3659 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3660 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3661 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is 'admin' and the
3662 default password is 'secret'.</p>
3668 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox
">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
3673 <div class="padding
"></div>
3677 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html
">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
3683 <p>Earlier, I reported about
3684 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html
">my
3685 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>. Friday I was
3686 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
3687 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
3688 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
3689 currently on the disk.</p>
3691 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
3692 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=
3472&DwnldID=
18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+
520+Series+(
180GB%
2c+
2.5in+SATA+
6Gb%
2fs%
2c+
25nm%
2c+MLC)&lang=eng
">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
3693 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
3694 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
3695 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
3696 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
3697 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
3698 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
3699 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
3700 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
3701 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
3702 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
3703 the broken disks.</p>
3709 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
3714 <div class="padding
"></div>
3718 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html
">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
3724 <p>Today I switched to
3725 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">my
3726 new laptop</a>. I've previously written about the problems I had with
3727 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3728 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html
">180
3729 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3730 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3731 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3732 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3733 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
3734 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3735 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3736 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3737 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3738 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3739 station from now on.</p>
3741 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3742 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3743 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
3744 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3745 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3746 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning. The
3747 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git
">source
3748 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3749 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3750 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3751 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3752 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3754 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3755 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
3756 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3757 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3758 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
3759 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
3760 parameters are tuned:</p>
3764 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3765 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3767 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3768 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3769 0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3771 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3774 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
3777 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
3779 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
3782 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
3783 to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
3787 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
3788 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
3789 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
3790 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
3791 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
3792 from getting the data on the disk (see
3793 <a href="http://xkcd.com/
538/
">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
3794 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
3795 right thing to do.</p>
3797 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
3798 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
3799 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
3801 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
3802 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
3803 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
3804 instead of during my work.</p>
3806 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
3807 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
3809 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
3810 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
3811 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
3813 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
3816 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3817 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3818 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3819 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3820 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3821 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3828 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
3833 <div class="padding
"></div>
3837 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html
">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
3843 <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3844 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">the
3845 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3846 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3847 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
3848 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/
">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3849 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
3850 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3852 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3853 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
3854 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
3855 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3856 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3857 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%. But around 60%, the disk
3858 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
3859 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
3860 lock up when I download a new
3861 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3862 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3863 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3865 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3866 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3867 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3868 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3869 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
3870 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
3872 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB,
3873 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-
302, FW:
3874 LF1i,
22APR2013, PBA: G39779-
300, LBA
351,
651,
888, LI P/N:
0C38722,
3875 Pb-free
2LI, LC P/N:
16-
200366, WWN:
55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3876 SSDSC2BW180A3L
2.5"
6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
3877 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
3879 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3880 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
3881 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3882 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3889 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3894 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3898 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July
13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo
</a>
3904 <p>The upcoming Saturday,
2013-
07-
13, we are organising a combined
3905 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3906 party in Oslo. It is organised by
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the
3907 member assosiation NUUG
</a> and
3908 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3909 project
</a> together with
<a href=
"http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
3912 <p>It starts
10:
00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
3913 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
3914 hand limited space, and only room for
30 people. Please put your name
3915 on
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
3916 wiki page
</a> if you plan to join us.
</p>
3922 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
3927 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3931 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?
</a>
3937 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3938 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3939 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41
</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
3940 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3941 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
3943 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230
</a>
3944 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3945 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
3946 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
3949 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3950 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3951 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
3952 feature at
<a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
3953 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3954 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3955 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3956 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
3957 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.
</p>
3959 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3960 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3961 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3962 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
3963 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3964 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3965 needed a new laptop now. :)
</p>
3967 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
3968 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.
</p>
3970 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The
180 GB SSD disk
3971 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3972 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3973 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3974 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3975 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
3976 reported to Debian as
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3977 report #
691427 2012-
10-
25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3978 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
3979 kernel developers as
3980 <a href=
"https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3981 report #
51861 2012-
12-
20</a> (Intel SSD
520 stops working under load
3982 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3983 Lenovo forums, both for
3984 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3985 2012-
11-
10</a> and for
3986 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
3987 03-
20-
2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
3988 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3989 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3990 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3992 <a href=
"https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3993 available
</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3994 minutes by writing to a file.
</p>
3996 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3997 contacting PCHELP Norway (request
01D1FDP) which handle support
3998 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3999 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
4000 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
4001 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
4008 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4013 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4017 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230
</a>
4023 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
4024 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
4025 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
4026 picking a
<a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
4027 X230
</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
4028 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
4029 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
4030 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
4031 with an expencive door stop.
</p>
4033 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4034 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4035 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
4036 feature at
<ahref=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
4037 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4038 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
4039 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.
</p>
4041 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
4042 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
4043 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
4044 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
4045 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
4046 new laptop now. :)
</p>
4048 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.
</p>
4054 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4059 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4063 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram
0.4)
</a>
4069 <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
4070 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
4071 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
4072 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
4073 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
4074 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version
0.4 of the
4075 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package
</a>
4076 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
4077 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
4078 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
4079 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:
</p>
4082 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4083 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
4084 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
4085 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
4086 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
4087 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
4090 Preconfiguring packages ...
4091 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
4092 (Reading database ...
259727 files and directories currently installed.)
4093 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
4094 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (
0.28+squeeze1) ...
4098 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
4099 printed instead:
</p>
4102 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4103 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
4107 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
4108 me some time when setting up new machines. :)
</p>
4110 <p>So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
4111 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
4112 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
4113 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
4114 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
4115 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
4116 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
4117 <tt>apt-get install
</tt>. The end result is a slightly better working
4120 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
4121 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
4122 finally fix
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
4123 #
655507</a>. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
4124 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
4125 from the nearby Debian mirror.
</p>
4131 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
4136 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4140 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video
</a>
4146 <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
4147 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
4148 or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
4149 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
4150 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
4151 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
4152 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
4153 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
4154 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
4155 i915 driver used by the
4156 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4157 EasyNote LV
</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.
</p>
4159 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
4160 i915.invert_brightness=
1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
4161 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=
1
4162 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
4163 can be done by running these commands as root:
</p>
4166 echo options i915 invert_brightness=
1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
4167 update-initramfs -u -k all
4170 <p>Since March
2012 there is
4171 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
4172 mechanism in the Linux kernel
</a> to tell the i915 driver which
4173 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
4174 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
4175 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
4176 intel_quirks array
</a> in the driver source
4177 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
</tt> (look for "
<tt>static
4178 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks
</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
4179 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
4182 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4183 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4186 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4187 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4188 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4189 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4190 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4191 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4192 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4193 <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4195 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4196 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4197 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4198 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4199 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4200 Capabilities: <access denied>
4201 Kernel driver in use: i915
4204 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4207 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4209 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4210 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4215 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4216 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4217 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4218 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
">dri-devel
4219 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4220 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4222 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/
2013-June/thread.html
">the
4223 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4224 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4225 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4226 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4227 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4229 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4230 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
4231 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
4232 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4233 the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
4234 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4235 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4236 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4237 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4238 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4239 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4240 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4242 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4243 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4244 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4245 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4252 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
4257 <div class="padding
"></div>
4261 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html
">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
4267 <p>Two days ago, I asked
4268 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html
">how
4269 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4270 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>. I found a solution, but am horrified
4271 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4274 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4275 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4276 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4277 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4280 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4281 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
4282 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4283 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and
4284 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4285 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms
4286 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4287 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4290 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4291 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4292 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4293 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is
4294 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4295 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4296 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
4297 without risking to loose the warranty?
</p>
4300 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4301 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV
</a>, to ensure the next person
4302 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4305 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4306 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.
</p>
4312 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4317 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4321 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows
8?
</a>
4327 <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
4328 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
4329 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
4330 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
4331 computer is preinstalled with Windows
8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4332 instead of a BIOS to boot.
</p>
4334 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4335 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
4336 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
4337 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4338 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4339 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
4340 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4341 Windows
8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4342 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4343 to get it to boot the Linux installer.
</p>
4345 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4346 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4347 EasyNote LV
</a> model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
4348 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4349 page. If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4350 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.
</p>
4352 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4353 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4360 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4365 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4369 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation
</a>
4375 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is
4376 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
4377 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4378 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
4379 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4380 educational software. The project was founded almost
12 years ago,
4381 2001-
07-
02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4382 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4383 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4384 donate some money
</a>.
4386 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4387 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4388 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
4389 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4390 the Debian Edu installer.
</p>
4393 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless
<a/>
4394 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4395 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4396 into a Debian Edu Workstation:
</p>
4400 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.
</li>
4401 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.
</li>
4402 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4403 our configuration.
</li>
4404 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4405 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4406 according to the profile specified in the config above,
4407 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.
</li>
4408 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4409 that could not be done using preseeding.
</li>
4410 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.
</li>
4414 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4415 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4416 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4417 the needed packages.
</p>
4419 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4420 setting up
<a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi
</a> as a
4421 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4422 <a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage">Raspbian
</a> installation and
4423 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4424 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).
</p>
4426 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4427 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4428 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:
</p>
4431 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4435 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4436 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4437 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4444 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>.
4449 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4453 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?
</a>
4460 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4461 announced a
</a> new
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4462 channel #debian-lego
</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4463 community interested in
<a href=
"http://www.lego.com/">LEGO
</a>, the
4464 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
4465 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page
</a> to have
4466 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
4467 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
4468 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4469 <a href=
"http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego
</a>
4470 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count
10 packages related to
4471 LEGO and
<a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms
</a>:
</p>
4474 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos
</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++
</td></tr>
4475 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad
</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software
</td></tr>
4476 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt
</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX
</td></tr>
4477 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd
</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS
</td></tr>
4478 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc
</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
</td></tr>
4479 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc
</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX
</td></tr>
4480 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt
</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
</td></tr>
4481 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer
</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT
</td></tr>
4482 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch
</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages
8 and up
</td></tr>
4483 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n
</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
</td></tr>
4486 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4487 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
4488 available in experimental.
</p>
4490 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4491 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4492 for LEGO designers.
</p>
4498 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
4503 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4507 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy
</a>
4513 <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4514 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4515 for Debian Wheezy
</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
4516 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4519 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4520 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
4521 <a href=
"http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch
</a> program, made famous by
4522 the
<a href=
"http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code
</a> movement, is
4523 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
4524 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle
</a> and
4525 <a href=
"http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart
</a>,
4526 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4527 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4528 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4531 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4532 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
4533 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4534 alpha release
</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4541 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>.
4546 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4550 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram
0.2 finally in the Debian archive
</a>
4556 <p>Today the
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4557 package
</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4558 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4559 2013-
01-
27, and today it was accepted into the archive.
</p>
4561 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4562 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
4563 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4564 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4565 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4572 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
4577 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4581 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)
</a>
4588 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4589 bitcoin related blog post
</a> mentioned that the new
4590 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package
</a> for
4591 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4592 2013-
01-
19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
4593 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4596 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4597 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4598 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4599 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4600 architectures (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #
672524</a>).
4601 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4602 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
4603 failing, please let us know via the BTS.
</p>
4605 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4606 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4607 if it run short on space (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4608 #
696715</a>). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4611 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4612 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4613 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4619 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4624 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4628 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!
</a>
4635 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4636 for testers
</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4637 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4638 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4639 out to create
</a> earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
4640 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4641 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4642 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4643 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
4644 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4645 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint
</a>
4646 repository in Debian. The new name? It is
<strong>Isenkram
</strong>.
4647 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use
</p>
4650 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4651 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4654 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
4655 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4656 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4657 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)
</p>
4659 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4660 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
4661 stuff, in other words. I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4662 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4665 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4666 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4669 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4670 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.
</p>
4676 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
4681 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4685 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian
</a>
4691 <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4692 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4693 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices
</a>. Now my
4694 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
4696 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4697 from the Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>, build and install the
4698 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
4699 autostart script.
</p>
4701 <p>The design is simple:
</p>
4705 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4706 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.
</li>
4708 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4709 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4712 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4713 the APT database, a database
4714 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4715 via HTTP
</a> and a database available as part of the package.
</li>
4717 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4718 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4719 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4720 package or packages.
</li>
4722 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4723 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.
</li>
4725 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4726 package while showing progress information in a window.
</li>
4730 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
4731 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
4732 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4733 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.
</p>
4735 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4736 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4737 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4738 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4739 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width=
"70%"></p>
4741 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4742 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
4743 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4744 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4745 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4746 method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4747 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4748 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.
</p>
4750 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
21 16:
50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4751 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4753 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4754 hw-support-handler; debuild
</tt>'. If you lack debuild, install the
4755 devscripts package.
</p>
4757 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
23 12:
00</strong>: The project is now
4758 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4759 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
4760 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4761 instructions
</a> for details.
</p>
4767 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
4772 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4776 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service
</a>
4782 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
4783 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4784 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
4785 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
4786 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
4787 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
4788 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4789 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4790 not a durable solution.
4792 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
4793 got a new one more than
10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
</p>
4797 <li>Lightweight (around
1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4799 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
</li>
4800 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
</li>
4801 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
</li>
4802 <li>Internal WIFI network card.
</li>
4803 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.
</li>
4804 <li>Some USB slots (
2-
3 is plenty)
</li>
4805 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
</li>
4806 <li>Video resolution at least
1024x768, with size around
12" (A4 paper
4808 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4809 X.org packages.
</li>
4810 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4815 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4816 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4817 last
10-
15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4818 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
4819 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4820 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4821 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4822 still be useful.
</p>
4824 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4825 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
4826 <a href=
"http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site
</a> for
4827 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4828 of the vendors listed on the
<a href=
"http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4829 Pre-loaded site
</a>.
</p>
4835 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4840 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4844 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type
</a>
4850 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4851 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
4852 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4853 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4854 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4855 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4856 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
4862 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4867 version = pkg.candidate
4869 version = pkg.installed
4872 record = version.record
4873 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4875 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4876 for t in mime_types:
4877 t = t.rstrip().strip()
4879 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4881 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4882 if
1 < len(sys.argv):
4883 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
4884 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4885 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4889 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
4892 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4893 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4895 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4896 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4897 browser-plugin-gnash
4901 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4902 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4903 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
4904 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
4906 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
18 14:
20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4907 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4908 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#
484010</a> from
2008 (and
4909 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#
698426</a> from today). Lack
4910 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4911 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.
</p>
4917 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4922 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4926 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?
</a>
4932 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
4933 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
4934 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4935 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4936 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
4937 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4938 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4939 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
4941 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4942 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4943 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
4945 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4946 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
4947 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
4948 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4949 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
4951 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
4955 ----- -----------------------
4971 18 application/x-ogg
4978 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
4982 ----- -----------------------
4998 18 application/x-ogg
5005 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
5009 ----- -----------------------
5026 18 application/x-ogg
5032 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
5033 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
5034 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
5037 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
5038 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
5044 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5049 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5053 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware
</a>
5059 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
5060 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
5061 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
5062 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
5063 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
5064 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
5065 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
5066 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
5067 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5070 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5071 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5072 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5076 Package: package-name
5077 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
5080 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
5081 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
5083 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
5084 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
5088 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
5091 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
5092 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
5095 Package: pcmciautils
5096 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
5099 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
5100 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
5103 Package: colorhug-client
5104 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
5107 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
5108 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
5109 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
5111 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
5112 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
5113 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
5114 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
5115 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
5116 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
5117 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
5120 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
5121 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
5122 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
5123 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
5125 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
5126 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
5127 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
5128 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
5130 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
5131 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
5134 % ./hw-support-lookup
5135 <br>yubikey-personalization
5139 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5140 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
5143 % ./hw-support-lookup
5148 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5149 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5150 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
5152 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5153 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
5154 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5155 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
5156 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5157 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5158 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
5161 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5162 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5163 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5164 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
5170 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
5175 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5179 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware
</a>
5185 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5186 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5187 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5188 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
5190 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5191 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
5193 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
5195 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5196 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
5197 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
5198 <URL:
<a href=
"http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/
26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device
</a> >,
5199 <URL:
<a href=
"http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c
</a> > and
5200 <URL:
<a href=
"http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup
</a> >.
5202 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5203 this shell script:
</p>
5206 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
5209 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5213 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5214 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5215 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5219 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
5221 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
5222 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
5225 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5228 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
5233 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
5234 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
5236 sc
00 (bus subclass)
5240 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5241 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5242 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
5243 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
5245 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5248 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
5250 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
5251 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
5254 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5257 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
5260 v
1D6B (device vendor)
5261 p
0001 (device product)
5263 dc
09 (device class)
5264 dsc
00 (device subclass)
5265 dp
00 (device protocol)
5266 ic
09 (interface class)
5267 isc
00 (interface subclass)
5268 ip
00 (interface protocol)
5271 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
5272 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
5273 these alias entries show up:
</p>
5276 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5277 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5278 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5279 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5282 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
5283 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
5284 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
5286 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
5288 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
5289 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
5292 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5295 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
5297 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
5299 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5300 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5301 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
5304 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5307 <p>The values present are
</p>
5310 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
5311 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
5312 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
5313 svn IBM (system vendor)
5314 pn
2371H4G (product name)
5315 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
5316 rvn IBM (board vendor)
5317 rn
2371H4G (board name)
5318 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
5319 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
5320 ct
10 (chassis type)
5321 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
5324 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
5325 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
5329 4 Low Profile Desktop
5342 17 Main Server Chassis
5343 18 Expansion Chassis
5345 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5346 21 Peripheral Chassis
5348 23 Rack Mount Chassis
5357 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5358 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5359 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
5361 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
5363 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
5367 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5370 <p>The values present are
</p>
5379 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
5380 the valid values are.
</p>
5382 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
5384 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5385 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5386 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5387 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5388 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
5389 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5390 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
5392 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
5394 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5395 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
5398 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
5400 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
5404 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5405 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
5409 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5411 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5413 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5414 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5415 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5416 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5417 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5418 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5419 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5420 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5424 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5425 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5426 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5427 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
5429 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5430 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5431 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
5437 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
5442 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5446 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint
</a>
5452 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5453 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5454 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5455 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
5456 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
5457 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5458 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5459 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
5460 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5461 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
5462 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5463 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
5464 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5465 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
5466 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5467 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5468 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
5469 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
5475 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram
">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot
">robot</a>.
5480 <div class="padding
"></div>
5484 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html
">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
5490 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5491 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5492 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5493 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5494 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5495 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5496 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5497 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5498 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5499 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
5500 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5502 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5503 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
5504 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
5509 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5510 starting when a user log in.</li>
5512 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5513 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5515 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5516 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5519 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5520 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5524 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5525 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5526 discover database to find packages and
5527 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
5530 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5531 draft package is now checked into
5532 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
5533 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
5534 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
5535 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5536 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5537 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
5538 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
5539 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5540 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
5541 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
5542 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5543 because of the freeze).</p>
5545 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5546 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5549 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
5551 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5552 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5553 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
5555 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5556 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5557 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5558 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5559 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5560 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5561 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
5563 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5564 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
5565 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
5566 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5567 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
5568 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
5569 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5570 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
5571 not be installed?
</p>
5573 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5574 please send me an email. :)
</p>
5580 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
5585 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5589 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian
</a>
5595 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5596 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5597 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5598 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5599 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
5600 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5601 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
5602 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5603 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
5604 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
5606 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
5607 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
5608 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
5614 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
5619 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5623 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version
0.7.2-
2 to Debian Squeeze
</a>
5629 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5630 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
5632 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
5633 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5634 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5635 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5636 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
5637 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5638 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5639 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
5640 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5643 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5644 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5645 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
5648 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5650 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5651 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5654 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
5655 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5656 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
5657 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5658 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
5659 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5660 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5661 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5662 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
5664 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5665 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5666 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
5672 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5677 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5681 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
5687 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5688 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
5689 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5690 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
5691 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5692 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
5693 is now maintained by a
5694 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5695 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
5696 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5697 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5698 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5699 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5700 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
5701 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5702 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5704 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5705 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5708 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5709 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5710 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5711 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5712 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5713 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5714 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5715 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
5716 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5717 new version to unstable.
5719 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5720 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
5721 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5722 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5723 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5724 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5725 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5726 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
5727 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5728 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5729 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
5730 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5731 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5732 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
5733 have not tested them.
</p>
5736 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5737 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5738 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5739 years ago, as can be
5740 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5741 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
5742 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5743 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5744 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
5745 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5746 the same address as last time,
5747 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
5753 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5758 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5762 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
5769 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
5770 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
5771 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
5772 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
5773 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
5775 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
5776 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
5777 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
5778 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
5780 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
5781 PostScript formats at
5782 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
5783 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
5789 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
5794 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5798 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med
19-årsdagen, Debian!
</a>
5805 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet
19
5806 år
</a>. Jeg har fulgt det de siste
12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
5807 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!
</p>
5813 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
5818 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5822 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
5828 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
5829 <a href=
"http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø
</a>, I started
5830 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
5831 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
5832 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
5833 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
5834 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
5835 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
5836 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
5837 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
5838 missing in my book.
</p>
5840 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
5841 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
5842 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
5843 Especially now that
<a href=
"http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
5844 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
5845 out
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
5846 Computer Science Songbook
</a>.
5852 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
5857 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5861 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
5867 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
5868 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
5869 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5870 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5871 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5872 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5873 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5874 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5875 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5876 the tools to do so.
</p>
5878 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5879 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
5880 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5881 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
5883 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5884 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
5885 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
5886 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5887 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5888 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5889 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5890 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
5892 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5893 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5894 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
5900 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5902 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5904 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
5906 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5907 eval "use $module;";
5909 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5910 system("yum install -y $pkg");
5911 eval "use $module;";
5915 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5921 sub run_firmware_script {
5922 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5924 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5927 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5929 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5930 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5932 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5936 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5937 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5938 # Run firmware packages
5939 for my $dir (@dirs) {
5940 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5941 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5942 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5943 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5944 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5952 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5953 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5958 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5961 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5963 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5964 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5966 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5970 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5971 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5972 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5973 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5976 for my $url (@paths) {
5977 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5979 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5981 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5982 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5986 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5987 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5993 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5997 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5998 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
5999 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
6000 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
6001 my $filename = shift;
6003 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6005 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
6007 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
6009 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
6011 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
6012 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
6013 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
6015 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
6016 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
6018 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
6020 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
6022 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
6025 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
6026 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
6028 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
6029 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
6031 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
6032 for my $path (@paths) {
6033 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
6034 push(@paths, $cpath);
6042 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
6043 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
6044 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
6045 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
6052 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6057 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6061 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel
1 different from single user boots?
</a>
6067 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
6068 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
6069 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
6070 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
6071 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
6072 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
6073 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
6074 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6075 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
6078 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6079 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6080 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6083 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6084 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
6085 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6086 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6087 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6088 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6089 hard to explain.
</p>
6091 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6092 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
6093 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
6094 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6095 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6096 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6097 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6098 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6099 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6100 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
6101 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6104 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
6105 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6106 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
6107 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
6108 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
6109 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
6110 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6111 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6112 after visiting single user mode.</p>
6114 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6115 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
6116 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6117 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6118 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6119 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6120 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
6121 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
6123 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6124 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
6125 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
6131 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>.
6136 <div class="padding
"></div>
6140 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html
">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
6146 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6147 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
6148 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
6149 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
6150 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6151 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6152 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6153 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6154 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6155 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
6156 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6157 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6158 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6160 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
6161 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6162 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
6163 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
6164 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6165 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6166 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6167 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
6168 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6170 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6171 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6172 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6175 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
6176 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6177 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6178 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6179 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6180 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6181 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6182 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
6183 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6184 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6185 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6186 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
6187 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6188 find time to push this forward.</p>
6194 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>.
6199 <div class="padding
"></div>
6203 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html
">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
6209 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6210 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6211 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
6212 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6215 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6216 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6217 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6221 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6222 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6223 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6224 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6225 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
6226 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
6227 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6230 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6231 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6232 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6233 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6234 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6235 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6236 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
6237 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6238 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6239 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
6240 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6241 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6242 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6244 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6245 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6246 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6247 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
6248 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
6249 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6250 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
6251 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
6252 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6253 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6255 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6256 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6257 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6258 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
6259 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
6260 latter behaviour.</li>
6264 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6265 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6266 it do not matter much.</p>
6268 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6269 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
6270 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6276 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264
">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
6281 <div class="padding
"></div>
6285 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html
">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
6291 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
6292 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6293 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6294 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6295 security support for a few years.</p>
6297 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6298 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
6299 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6300 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6301 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
6302 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6303 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6304 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6305 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6306 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6307 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6308 easier in the future.</p>
6310 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6311 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6312 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
6313 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6314 do not have time for.</p>
6320 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>.
6325 <div class="padding
"></div>
6329 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html
">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
6335 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
6336 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6337 update in English.</p>
6339 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6340 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6341 of the British service
6342 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6343 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
6344 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6345 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
6346 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6347 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
6348 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6349 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6350 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
6351 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6352 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6353 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6354 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6356 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6357 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
6358 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6359 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
6360 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6361 public infrastructure.</p>
6363 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6370 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart
">kart</a>.
6375 <div class="padding
"></div>
6379 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html
">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
6385 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6386 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
6387 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6388 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6389 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
6390 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
6391 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6392 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6393 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6394 out which security holes were present in our free software
6397 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6398 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6399 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
6400 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6401 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6402 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
6403 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6404 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
6405 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6406 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
6407 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
6408 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6409 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
6410 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6411 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6412 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6414 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6415 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6416 check out, one could look up
6417 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%
3A%
2Fa%
3Agnu%
3Agzip:
1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
6418 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6419 The most recent one is
6420 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6421 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6422 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6424 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6425 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
6426 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6427 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
6428 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6429 security issues out.</p>
6431 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6432 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
6433 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
6435 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
6436 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6437 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6439 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6440 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6441 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
6442 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6443 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6444 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
6445 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6446 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
6447 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6448 established soon.</p>
6450 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6451 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6452 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6453 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6454 for their packages.</p>
6460 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
6465 <div class="padding
"></div>
6469 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html
">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
6476 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
6477 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6478 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6479 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
6480 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6481 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6482 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
6483 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6484 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
6485 one of my machines like this:</p>
6489 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6492 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6501 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6502 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6505 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6506 echo loaded pci modules:
6508 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6509 for address in * ; do
6510 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6511 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6512 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6513 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
6514 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
6524 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6528 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6529 echo loaded usb modules:
6531 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6532 for address in * ; do
6533 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6534 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6535 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6536 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
6537 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
6549 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6556 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6561 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6565 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux
</a>
6571 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
6572 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
6573 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
6574 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
6575 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
6576 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
6577 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
6578 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
6581 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
6582 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
6583 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
6584 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
6585 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
6586 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
6587 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
6588 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
6590 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
6591 I perform on a new model.
</p>
6595 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
6596 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
6597 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
6599 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
6600 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
6602 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
6603 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
6604 reported by the program.
</li>
6606 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
6607 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
6608 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
6609 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
6610 normally test this by playing
6611 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
6612 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
6614 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
6615 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
6617 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
6618 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
6620 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
6621 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
6623 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
6624 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
6627 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
6628 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
6631 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
6632 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
6635 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
6636 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
6637 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
6638 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
6641 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
6642 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
6643 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
6648 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
6649 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
6650 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
6651 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
6652 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
6653 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
6654 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
6655 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
6661 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>.
6666 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6670 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
6676 <p>As I continue to explore
6677 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
6678 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
6679 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
6681 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
6682 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
6683 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
6684 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
6685 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
6686 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
6687 all transactions. There I can see that my address
6688 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
6689 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
6690 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
6691 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
6692 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
6693 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
6694 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
6695 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
6696 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
6697 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
6698 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
6699 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
6700 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
6702 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
6703 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
6704 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
6705 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
6706 If the Skolelinux foundation
6707 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
6708 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
6709 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
6710 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
6711 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
6712 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
6713 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
6714 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
6716 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
6717 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
6718 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
6719 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
6720 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
6721 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
6722 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
6723 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
6724 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
6725 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
6726 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
6727 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
6728 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
6729 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
6732 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
6733 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
6734 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
6735 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
6736 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
6737 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
6738 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
6739 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
6741 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
6742 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
6743 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
6744 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
6747 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
6748 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
6749 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
6750 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
6751 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
6757 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
6762 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6766 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money
</a>
6772 <p>With this weeks lawless
6773 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
6774 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
6775 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
6776 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
6777 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
6779 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
6780 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
6781 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
6782 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
6783 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
6784 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
6785 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
6787 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
6788 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
6789 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
6790 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
6791 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
6792 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
6793 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
6794 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
6795 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
6796 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
6798 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
6799 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
6800 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
6801 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
6802 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
6803 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
6805 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
6806 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
6807 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
6808 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
6810 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
6811 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
6812 donations to the address
6813 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
6819 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
6824 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6828 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
6834 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6835 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6836 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6837 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6838 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
6839 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6840 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6841 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
6843 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6844 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6845 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
6846 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6847 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6848 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
6849 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6850 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6851 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
6852 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6853 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
6855 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6856 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6857 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
6858 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6859 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
6860 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6861 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6862 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6863 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6864 what is going on.
</p>
6870 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
6875 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6879 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove
</a>
6885 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6886 upgrade testing of the
6887 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6888 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
6889 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6890 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
6892 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
6894 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
6901 browser-plugin-gnash
6908 freedesktop-sound-theme
6910 gconf-defaults-service
6925 gnome-desktop-environment
6929 gnome-session-canberra
6934 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6940 libapache2-mod-dnssd
6943 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6946 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
6947 libboost-python1.42
.0
6948 libboost-thread1.42
.0
6950 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
6952 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
6959 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6974 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6979 libgtksourceview2.0-common
6980 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6981 libmono-addins0.2-cil
6982 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6983 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6984 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6985 libmono-posix2.0-cil
6986 libmono-security2.0-cil
6987 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6988 libmono-system2.0-cil
6991 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6992 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
7002 libtelepathy-farsight0
7011 nautilus-sendto-empathy
7015 python-aptdaemon-gtk
7017 python-beautifulsoup
7032 python-gtksourceview2
7043 python-pkg-resources
7050 python-twisted-conch
7056 python-zope.interface
7061 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7068 system-config-printer-udev
7070 telepathy-mission-control-
5
7083 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
7091 fast-user-switch-applet
7110 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
7112 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
7118 system-config-printer
7125 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
7128 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7131 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
7137 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
7139 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
7145 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
7152 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
7168 kdeartwork-emoticons
7170 kdeartwork-theme-icon
7174 kdebase-workspace-bin
7175 kdebase-workspace-data
7189 kscreensaver-xsavers
7204 plasma-dataengines-workspace
7206 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7207 plasma-runners-addons
7208 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7209 plasma-scriptengine-python
7210 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7211 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7212 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7213 plasma-scriptengines
7214 plasma-wallpapers-addons
7215 plasma-widget-folderview
7216 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7220 xscreensaver-data-extra
7222 xscreensaver-gl-extra
7223 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7226 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
7230 google-gadgets-common
7248 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
7253 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
7262 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
7264 libplasmagenericshell4
7278 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
7279 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
7281 libsmokektexteditor3
7289 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
7295 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
7307 plasma-dataengines-addons
7308 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
7309 plasma-widget-lancelot
7310 plasma-widgets-addons
7311 plasma-widgets-workspace
7315 update-notifier-common
7318 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
7319 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
7320 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
7321 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
7327 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>.
7332 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7336 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images
</a>
7342 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
7343 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
7344 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
7345 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
7346 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
7347 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
7348 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
7349 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
7350 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
7353 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
7354 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
7355 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
7356 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
7357 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
7358 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
7364 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
7369 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
7370 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
7376 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
7377 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
7381 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
7382 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
7383 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
7384 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
7387 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
7388 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
7390 parted $img mklabel msdos
7391 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
7392 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
7393 parted $img set
1 boot on
7396 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
7397 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
7399 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
7400 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
7401 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
7403 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
7404 losetup -d /dev/loop0
7407 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
7408 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
7410 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
7411 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
7412 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
7413 seem to work just fine.
</p>
7419 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>.
7424 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7428 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop
</a>
7434 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
7435 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7436 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
7437 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
7439 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
7440 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
7441 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
7443 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
7445 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
7448 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
7449 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
7450 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
7451 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
7452 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
7453 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
7454 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
7455 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
7456 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
7457 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
7458 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7459 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7460 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
7461 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
7462 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
7463 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
7464 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
7465 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
7466 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7467 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
7468 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
7469 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7470 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
7471 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
7472 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
7473 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7474 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7475 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
7476 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7477 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
7478 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
7479 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7480 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
7481 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
7482 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
7483 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
7484 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
7485 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
7486 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
7487 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
7488 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
7489 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
7490 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
7491 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
7492 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
7493 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
7494 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
7495 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
7496 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
7497 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
7498 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
7499 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
7500 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7501 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
7502 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
7503 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
7504 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
7505 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
7509 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
7512 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
7513 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
7514 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
7515 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
7516 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
7517 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
7518 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
7519 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
7520 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
7521 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
7522 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
7523 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7524 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
7525 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
7526 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
7527 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
7528 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7529 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
7530 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
7531 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
7532 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
7533 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
7534 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
7535 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
7536 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
7537 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
7538 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
7539 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
7540 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
7543 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
7546 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7549 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
7555 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
7557 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
7560 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
7561 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7562 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
7563 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
7564 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
7565 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
7566 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7567 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
7568 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
7569 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7570 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
7571 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
7572 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
7573 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
7574 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
7575 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
7576 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
7577 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
7578 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
7579 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
7580 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
7581 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
7582 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
7583 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
7584 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
7585 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
7586 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
7587 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
7588 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
7592 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
7595 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
7596 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
7597 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
7598 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
7599 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
7600 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
7601 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
7602 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
7603 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
7604 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
7605 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
7606 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
7607 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
7608 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
7609 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7610 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7611 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
7612 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
7613 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7614 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
7615 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7616 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
7617 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7618 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7619 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
7620 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
7621 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
7622 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
7623 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
7624 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
7625 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7626 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7627 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7630 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
7633 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
7634 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
7635 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
7636 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
7637 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7638 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
7639 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7642 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
7645 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
7652 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>.
7657 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7661 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
7668 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
7669 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
7670 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
7671 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
7672 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
7673 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
7674 releases out more often.
</p>
7676 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
7677 I have considered setting up a
<a
7678 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
7679 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
7680 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
7681 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
7682 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
7683 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
7684 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
7685 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
7686 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
7687 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
7688 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
7689 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
7695 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
7700 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7704 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
7710 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
7712 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
7714 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
7715 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
7721 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7726 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7730 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
7736 <p>Some updates.
</p>
7738 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
7739 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
7740 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
7741 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7742 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
7745 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7746 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7747 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7749 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
7750 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
7751 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7752 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7753 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7754 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
7756 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
7757 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7758 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
7759 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7760 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
7761 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7762 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7763 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
7764 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7765 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
7771 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
7776 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7780 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu
</a>
7786 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
7787 popularity-contest numbers
</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7788 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
7789 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
7790 working flash is important for Debian users. Around
10 percent of the
7791 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7794 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August
2008
7795 («
<a href=
"http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7796 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7797 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs
</a>»), one of the most important problems
7798 schools experienced with
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7799 Edu/Skolelinux
</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
7800 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7801 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7802 good reason to stay with Windows.
</p>
7804 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7805 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7806 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
7807 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7808 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7809 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7810 example Internet Explorer
6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7811 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7812 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7813 pages they want to visit.
</p>
7815 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7816 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7817 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7818 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7819 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7820 the new release
0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7821 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version
0.8.7.
7822 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7823 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
7824 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7825 accept the new package into Squeeze.
</p>
7831 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
7836 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7840 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
7846 <p>I discovered this while doing
7847 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
7848 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
7849 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
7850 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
7851 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
7853 <p>An example is from todays
7854 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
7855 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
7856 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
7857 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
7858 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
7859 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
7860 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
7862 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
7865 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
7866 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
7867 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
7868 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
7869 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
7872 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
7873 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
7874 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
7875 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
7876 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
7877 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
7878 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
7879 of dependency loops.
</p>
7882 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
7883 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
7885 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
7886 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
7888 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
7889 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
7890 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
7891 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
7892 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
7899 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
7904 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7908 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP
</a>
7915 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
7917 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
7919 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
7920 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
7922 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
7923 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
7924 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
7925 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
7927 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
7928 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
7929 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
7931 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
7933 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
7934 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
7937 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
7938 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
7939 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
7940 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
7941 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
7942 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
7944 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
7945 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
7946 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
7947 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
7948 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
7949 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
7950 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
7951 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
7952 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
7953 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
7954 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
7955 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
7956 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
7957 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
7958 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
7959 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
7962 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7963 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7964 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7965 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7966 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7967 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7968 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7970 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7971 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7972 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
7973 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
7974 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
7975 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
7978 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
7979 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
7980 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
7981 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7985 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7987 objectclass: dnsdomain
7988 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7991 associateddomain: tjener.intern
7993 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7995 objectclass: dnsdomain2
7996 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7998 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
7999 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
8002 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
8003 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
8004 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
8005 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
8006 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
8007 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
8008 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
8009 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
8010 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
8011 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
8012 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
8015 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
8019 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8020 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8021 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8022 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8023 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8024 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8026 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8027 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
8030 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
8031 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
8032 reverse lookups.
</p>
8034 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
8035 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
8036 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
8037 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
8039 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
8040 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
8041 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
8043 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
8044 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
8045 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
8046 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
8047 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
8049 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
8050 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
8051 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
8052 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
8053 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
8055 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
8056 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
8057 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
8058 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
8059 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
8060 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
8063 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
8066 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
8067 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
8068 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
8069 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
8070 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
8074 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
8075 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
8076 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
8077 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
8078 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
8079 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
8081 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
8083 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
8084 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
8085 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
8086 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
8087 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
8089 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
8090 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
8091 stored. These are the relevant entries from
8092 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
8095 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
8096 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
8099 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
8100 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
8101 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
8102 search result is this entry:
</p>
8105 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8108 objectClass: dhcpServer
8109 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8112 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
8113 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
8114 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
8115 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
8116 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
8117 The search result is this entry:
</p>
8120 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8123 objectClass: dhcpService
8124 objectClass: dhcpOptions
8125 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8126 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
8127 dhcpStatements: authoritative
8128 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
8129 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
8130 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
8133 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
8134 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8135 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8136 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8137 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
8138 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
8139 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8140 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8141 related computer objects.
</p>
8143 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8144 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
8145 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8146 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8147 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
8151 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8154 objectClass: dhcpHost
8155 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
8156 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8159 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8160 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8161 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
8162 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8163 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
8164 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8165 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8166 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8167 structural object class.
8169 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
8171 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8172 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8173 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8174 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8175 in the configuration.
</p>
8177 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8178 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8179 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8180 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8181 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8184 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8185 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
8189 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8190 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8191 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8192 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8193 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8194 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8195 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8196 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8197 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8198 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8201 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8202 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8203 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8204 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
8206 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8210 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8213 objectClass: dhcpHost
8214 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8215 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8216 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8217 arecord:
10.11.12.13
8218 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
8219 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8222 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8223 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8224 auxiliary object class.
</p>
8230 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8235 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8239 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
8245 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8246 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8247 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8248 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8249 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
8251 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8252 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
8254 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8255 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
8256 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8257 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8258 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8259 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
8261 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8262 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8263 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8264 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8265 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
8268 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8269 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8270 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
8274 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8276 objectClass: dhcphost
8277 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8278 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8279 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8280 arecord:
10.11.12.13
8281 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
8282 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8286 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8287 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8288 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
8289 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
8291 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8292 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8293 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8294 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8295 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8296 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8297 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8298 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
8300 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8301 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
8307 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8312 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8316 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
8322 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8323 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8324 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8325 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
8327 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8328 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
8329 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8330 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8333 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8334 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8335 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
8337 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8338 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8339 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
8342 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8344 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8346 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8347 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8348 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8350 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8351 # existence of attribute names.
8353 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8354 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8355 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8357 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8358 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
8360 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8363 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8365 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8366 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8367 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8368 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
8369 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8370 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8371 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8372 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8373 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8374 # bass value on to clients
8375 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8381 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8382 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8383 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8384 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8385 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
8387 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8388 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
8390 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8391 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
8392 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8393 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
8394 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
8395 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
8401 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8406 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8410 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
8417 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8418 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8419 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
8420 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
8421 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8422 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
8423 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8424 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
8425 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8426 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
8427 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
8428 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8429 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
8435 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8440 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8444 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop
</a>
8450 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
8451 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8452 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
8453 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
8454 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8455 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8456 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
8457 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
8459 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8460 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
8461 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
8462 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8463 publish the difference.
</p>
8465 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
8468 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8469 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
8470 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8471 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8472 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8473 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8474 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8475 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8478 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
8481 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8482 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8483 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
8484 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8485 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
8486 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
8487 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8488 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
8489 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
8490 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
8491 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8492 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
8493 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8494 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
8495 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8496 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
8497 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
8498 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8499 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8500 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8503 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8506 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8507 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8508 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8509 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8510 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8511 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8512 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8513 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8514 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8515 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8516 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8517 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8518 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8519 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8520 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8521 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8522 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8523 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8524 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8525 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8526 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8529 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8532 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8533 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8534 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8537 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8538 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8539 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8540 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8541 the difference somewhat.
8547 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>.
8552 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8556 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
8562 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
8563 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
8564 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
8565 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
8566 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
8567 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
8568 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
8569 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
8570 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
8571 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
8573 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
8574 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
8575 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
8576 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
8579 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
8580 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
8581 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
8582 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
8584 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
8585 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
8587 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
8588 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
8589 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
8590 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
8591 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
8597 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8602 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8606 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object
</a>
8613 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
8614 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
8615 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
8616 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
8618 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
8619 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
8620 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
8621 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
8623 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
8624 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
8625 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
8628 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
8630 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
8631 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
8632 available today from IETF.
</p>
8635 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
8636 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
8638 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
8640 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
8644 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
8645 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
8648 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
8649 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
8650 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
8652 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8653 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
8659 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8664 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8668 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output
</a>
8674 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
8675 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
8676 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
8677 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
8678 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
8682 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8683 tasksel --new-install
8686 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
8687 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
8688 any output what so ever.
8690 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
8691 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
8692 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
8693 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
8694 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
8695 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
8699 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8700 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
8704 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
8705 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
8706 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
8707 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
8708 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
8709 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
8712 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
8713 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
8720 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
8725 <div class="padding
"></div>
8729 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html
">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
8736 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
8737 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
8738 finally made the upgrade logs available from
8739 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
8740 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
8741 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
8742 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
8744 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
8745 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
8746 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
8747 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
8748 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
8749 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
8750 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
8751 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
8753 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
8754 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
8755 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
8758 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
8759 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
8760 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
8761 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
8762 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
8763 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
8764 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
8767 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
8768 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
8769 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
8770 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
8771 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
8772 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
8773 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
8774 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8775 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8776 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8777 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8778 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8779 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8780 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8781 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8782 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8783 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8784 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8785 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8786 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8787 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8788 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8789 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8790 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8791 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8792 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8793 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8794 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8795 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
8796 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
8798 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
8800 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
8801 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
8802 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
8803 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
8804 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8805 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
8806 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
8807 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
8808 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
8809 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
8810 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8811 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
8812 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8813 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
8814 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
8815 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
8816 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
8817 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
8818 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
8819 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
8820 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
8821 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
8822 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
8823 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
8824 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8825 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
8826 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
8827 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
8828 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
8829 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8830 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8833 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
8835 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
8836 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
8837 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
8838 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
8839 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
8840 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
8841 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8842 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8843 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8844 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8845 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8846 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8847 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8848 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8849 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8850 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8851 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8852 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8853 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8854 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8855 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8856 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8857 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8858 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8859 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8860 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8861 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8862 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
8864 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
8865 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
8866 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8867 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
8868 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
8869 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8870 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
8871 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
8872 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8873 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
8874 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
8875 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
8876 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
8877 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
8878 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
8879 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
8880 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
8881 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8882 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8883 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8884 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
8885 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8886 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
8887 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
8888 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8889 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8890 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
8891 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
8892 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
8893 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
8894 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
8895 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
8896 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
8897 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
8898 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
8899 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8900 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8908 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>.
8913 <div class="padding
"></div>
8917 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
8923 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
8924 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
8925 have been discovered and reported in the process
8926 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
8927 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
8928 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
8929 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
8930 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
8932 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
8933 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
8934 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
8935 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
8936 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
8937 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
8939 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
8940 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
8941 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8942 is created. The bug report
8943 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
8944 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
8945 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
8946 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
8947 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
8948 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
8949 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
8950 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
8951 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
8952 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
8953 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
8954 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
8957 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
8958 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
8976 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
8977 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
8979 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
8980 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8981 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
8985 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
8989 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
8990 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
8991 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
8993 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
8995 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
8996 # to return the correct answers.
8997 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
8998 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
9000 # Include the desktop and laptop task
9001 for test in desktop laptop ; do
9002 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
9006 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
9009 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9010 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
9011 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
9012 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
9014 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
9015 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9016 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9017 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
9021 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
9022 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
9023 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
9024 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
9025 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
9026 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
9028 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
9029 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
9030 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
9031 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
9032 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
9033 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
9034 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
9036 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
9037 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
9038 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
9039 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
9040 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
9047 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>.
9052 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9056 <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>
9062 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
9063 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
9064 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
9065 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
9066 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
9067 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
9068 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
9070 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
9071 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
9080 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
9082 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
9085 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
9089 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
9096 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
9097 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
9098 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
9100 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
9101 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
9108 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>.
9113 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9117 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
9124 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
9125 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
9126 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
9127 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
9128 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
9134 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>.
9139 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9143 <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>
9149 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9150 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9151 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
9152 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9153 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
9156 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9158 Dell Computer Corporation
1
9161 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
9167 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9168 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
9169 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9170 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
9171 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
9174 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9175 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9176 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
9177 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9178 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9179 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9186 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>.
9191 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9195 <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>
9201 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9202 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
9203 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9204 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9207 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9208 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
9209 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9210 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9211 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
9212 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
9214 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9215 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9216 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
9217 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9218 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9219 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9220 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
9221 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
9223 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
9229 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>.
9234 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9238 <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>
9244 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
9245 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
9246 issues are known and should be solved:
9250 <li>The wicd package seen to
9251 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
9252 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
9253 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
9254 seem to be on the case.
</li>
9256 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
9257 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
9258 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
9259 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
9261 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
9262 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
9263 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
9264 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
9265 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
9266 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
9267 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
9268 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
9272 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
9273 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
9274 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
9275 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
9277 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9278 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9279 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9280 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
9282 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
9288 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>.
9293 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9297 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
9303 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
9304 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
9305 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
9306 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
9308 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
9309 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
9310 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
9311 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
9312 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
9313 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
9314 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
9315 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
9316 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
9317 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
9318 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
9319 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
9320 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
9323 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
9324 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
9325 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
9326 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
9327 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
9328 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
9329 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
9330 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
9331 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
9332 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
9335 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
9336 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
9337 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
9338 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
9339 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
9340 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
9342 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
9343 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
9349 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>.
9354 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9358 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable
</a>
9364 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
9365 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
9366 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
9367 expected, if I am to believe the
9368 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9369 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
9370 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
9371 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
9372 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
9373 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
9376 More information about
9377 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9378 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
9379 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
9380 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
9386 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9387 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9388 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9389 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
9395 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>.
9400 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9404 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients
</a>
9410 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
9411 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
9412 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
9413 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
9414 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
9415 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
9416 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
9417 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
9419 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
9420 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
9421 this on the collector host:
</p>
9424 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
9427 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
9428 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
9430 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
9431 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
9432 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
9433 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
9440 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>.
9445 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9449 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
9455 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
9456 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
9458 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
9460 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
9461 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
9462 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
9463 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
9464 based boot system. Tollef is
9465 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
9466 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
9467 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
9468 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
9469 at the moment do not.
</p>
9471 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
9472 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
9473 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
9474 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
9475 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
9478 <p>In the mean time, based on the
9479 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9480 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
9481 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
9482 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
9483 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
9484 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
9485 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
9486 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
9492 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9497 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9501 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing
</a>
9507 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
9508 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
9509 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
9510 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
9511 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9512 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
9513 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
9516 CONCURRENCY=makefile
9519 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
9520 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
9521 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
9522 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
9523 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
9524 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
9525 make this happen.
</p>
9527 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
9528 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
9529 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
9530 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
9531 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
9533 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
9534 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
9535 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
9536 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
9538 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9539 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9540 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9541 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
9547 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>.
9552 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9556 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing
</a>
9562 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version
2.87dsf-
2,
9563 and the upload of insserv version
1.12.0-
10 yesterday, Debian unstable
9564 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
9565 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
9566 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
9567 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
9568 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.
</p>
9570 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
9571 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
9572 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.
</p>
9578 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9583 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9587 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development
</a>
9593 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
9594 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
9595 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
9596 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
9597 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
9598 the package up to date.
</p>
9600 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
9601 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About
10 days ago, I made
9602 a new upstream tarball with version number
2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
9603 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
9604 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
9605 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
9606 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
9607 upstream project at
<a href=
"http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah
</a>, and continue
9608 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
9609 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
9610 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
9611 working on the future release.
</p>
9613 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
9614 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.
</p>
9620 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9625 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9629 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker
</a>
9635 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
9636 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
9637 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
9639 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
9640 gathering
</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
9641 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
9642 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
9643 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
9644 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.
</p>
9646 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
9647 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
9652 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.
</li>
9654 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
9655 clock is in UTC.
</li>
9657 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
9658 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9659 based boot sequencing
</a>, and enable concurrent booting.
</li>
9663 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
9664 <a href=
"http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
9667 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
9668 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut
6 seconds
9669 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
9670 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
9671 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
9674 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
9675 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
9676 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
9677 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
9678 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
9679 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
9680 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)
</p>
9686 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>.
9691 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9695 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand
</a>
9701 <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
9702 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
9703 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
9704 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
9706 <a href=
"http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
9707 rapport
</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
9708 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
9709 <a href=
"http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
9710 höftade Sverigesiffror
</a>, oppsummeres slik:
</p>
9713 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att
25 procent av all mjukvara i
9714 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
9715 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
9716 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
9719 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er
<a
9720 href=
"http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
9721 piracy figures need a shot of reality
</a> og
<a
9722 href=
"http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
9723 Copyright Treaty Work?
</a></p>
9725 <p>Fant lenkene via
<a
9726 href=
"http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
9727 på Slashdot
</a>.
</p>
9733 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>.
9738 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9742 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med
21% i
2009</a>
9749 <a href=
"http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
9750 tall
</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
9751 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
9752 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har
490
9753 (
61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og
196
9754 (
25%) windowstjenere, samt
112 (
14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
9755 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.
</p>
9761 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9766 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9770 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis
</a>
9776 <p><a href=
"http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
9777 IT melder
</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
9778 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
9779 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
9780 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
9781 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
9782 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
9783 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
9784 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
9785 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
9786 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
9787 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
9788 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
9789 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
9790 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
9791 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
9792 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
9793 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
9794 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
9795 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.
</p>
9797 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
9798 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
9799 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
9800 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
9801 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
9802 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
9803 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
9810 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
9815 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9819 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot
</a>
9825 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
9826 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
9827 do not yet know them.
</p>
9829 <p>The first one is
<a href=
"http://valgrind.org/">valgrind
</a>, a
9830 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
9831 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
9832 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
9833 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
9834 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
9835 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
9836 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
9837 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
9838 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
9839 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
9841 <p>The second one is
9842 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity
</a> which is
9843 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
9844 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
9845 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
9846 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
9847 and the company behind it is running
9848 <a href=
"http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service
</a> for the
9849 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
9850 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
9851 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
9852 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
9853 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
9854 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
9855 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.
</p>
9857 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
9858 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
9859 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
9860 surrounded by today.
</p>
9866 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
9871 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9875 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch
</a>
9882 <a href=
"http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
9883 patch is better than a useless patch
</a>. I completely disagree, as a
9884 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
9885 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
9886 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
9893 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9898 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9902 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications
</a>
9908 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
9909 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
9910 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
9911 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
9912 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
9913 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
9914 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
9917 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
9918 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
9919 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
9920 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
9921 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
9922 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
9923 blocked from doing so.
</p>
9925 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
9926 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
9927 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
9928 requirements change.
</p>
9930 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
9931 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
9932 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
9938 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
9943 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9947 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
9953 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
9954 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
9955 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
9956 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
9957 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
9958 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
9959 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
9960 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
9961 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
9962 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
9963 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
9964 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
9965 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
9966 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
9973 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9978 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9982 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new LDAP schemas replacing RFC
2307?
</a>
9988 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
9989 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
9990 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
9991 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
9992 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
9993 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
9995 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
9996 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
9997 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
9998 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
9999 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
10000 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
10001 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
10002 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
10003 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
10004 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
10005 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
10006 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
10007 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
10009 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
10010 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
10011 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
10012 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
10014 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
10015 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
10017 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
10018 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
10019 new IETF work group?
</p>
10025 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
10030 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10032 <div class=
"entry">
10033 <div class=
"title">
10034 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut
</a>
10040 <p>Endelig er
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>
10041 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny
</a> gitt ut.
10042 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
10043 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
10044 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
10045 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> /
10046 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> ferdig
10047 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
10048 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
10049 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
10050 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
10051 <tt>insserv
</tt>.
</p>
10057 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
10062 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10064 <div class=
"entry">
10065 <div class=
"title">
10066 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release
</a>
10072 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
10073 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
10074 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
10075 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
10076 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
10077 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
10078 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
10079 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
10081 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
10082 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
10083 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
10084 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
10085 of these cards.
</p>
10091 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp
</a>.
10096 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10098 <div class=
"entry">
10099 <div class=
"title">
10100 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian
</a>
10106 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
10107 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
10108 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
10109 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
10110 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
10111 notes are available on
10112 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
10113 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
10114 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
10115 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
10116 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
10117 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
10118 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
10119 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
10120 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
10122 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
10123 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
10129 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
10134 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10136 <p style=
"text-align: right;"><a href=
"debian.rss"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
"RSS Feed" width=
"36" height=
"14" /></a></p>
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2)
</a></li>
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3)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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7)
</a></li>
10232 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
10234 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (
5)
</a></li>
10236 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (
7)
</a></li>
10238 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (
9)
</a></li>
10240 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
10247 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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3)
</a></li>
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1)
</a></li>
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5)
</a></li>
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10376 <li><a href=
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13)
</a></li>
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1)
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1)
</a></li>
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4)
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9)
</a></li>
10386 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (
15)
</a></li>
10388 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (
2)
</a></li>
10390 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (
2)
</a></li>
10392 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (
122)
</a></li>
10394 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (
154)
</a></li>
10396 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (
10)
</a></li>
10398 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (
15)
</a></li>
10400 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (
20)
</a></li>
10402 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (
4)
</a></li>
10404 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (
306)
</a></li>
10406 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (
23)
</a></li>
10408 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (
12)
</a></li>
10410 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (
25)
</a></li>
10412 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (
9)
</a></li>
10414 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (
16)
</a></li>
10416 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (
20)
</a></li>
10418 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (
42)
</a></li>
10420 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (
11)
</a></li>
10422 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (
19)
</a></li>
10424 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (
9)
</a></li>
10426 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (
8)
</a></li>
10428 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (
2)
</a></li>
10430 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (
1)
</a></li>
10432 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (
8)
</a></li>
10434 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (
37)
</a></li>
10436 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (
7)
</a></li>
10438 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (
273)
</a></li>
10440 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (
177)
</a></li>
10442 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (
22)
</a></li>
10444 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (
2)
</a></li>
10446 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (
58)
</a></li>
10448 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (
92)
</a></li>
10450 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (
1)
</a></li>
10452 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (
1)
</a></li>
10454 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (
11)
</a></li>
10456 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (
3)
</a></li>
10458 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
9)
</a></li>
10460 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
10462 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (
4)
</a></li>
10464 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (
2)
</a></li>
10466 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (
46)
</a></li>
10468 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (
4)
</a></li>
10470 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (
4)
</a></li>
10472 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (
49)
</a></li>
10474 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (
3)
</a></li>
10476 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (
10)
</a></li>
10478 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (
36)
</a></li>
10480 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (
2)
</a></li>
10482 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (
2)
</a></li>
10484 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (
8)
</a></li>
10486 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (
55)
</a></li>
10488 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (
4)
</a></li>
10490 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (
38)
</a></li>
10496 <p style=
"text-align: right">
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