blog/archive/2020/05/05.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from May 2020</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from May 2020</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>More reliable vlc bittorrent plugin in Debian (version 2.9)</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_reliable_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_9_.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_reliable_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_9_.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2020 17:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am very happy to report that a more reliable vlc bittorrent
  15 plugin was just uploaded into debian.  This fixes a couple of crash
  16 bugs in the plugin, hopefully making the VLC experience even better
  17 when streaming directly from a bittorrent source.  The package is
  18 currently in Debian unstable, but should be available in Debian
  19 testing in two days.  To test it, simply install it like this:&lt;/p&gt;
  20
  21 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  22 apt install vlc-plugin-bittorrent
  23 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  24
  25 &lt;p&gt;After it is installed, you can try to use it to play a file
  26 downloaded live via bittorrent like this:
  27
  28 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  29 vlc https://archive.org/download/Glass_201703/Glass_201703_archive.torrent
  30 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  31
  32 &lt;p&gt;It also support magnet links and local .torrent files.&lt;/p&gt;
  33
  34 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  35 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  36 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  37 </description>
  38         </item>
  39
  40         <item>
  41                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Yvan Masson</title>
  42                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</link>
  43                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</guid>
  44                 <pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2020 06:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
  45                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been way too long since my last interview, but as the
  46 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
  47 community is still active, and new people keep showing up on the IRC
  48 channel &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt; and
  49 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;the debian-edu mailing
  50 list&lt;/a&gt;, I decided to give it another go.  I was hoping someone else
  51 might pick up the idea and run with it, but this has not happened as
  52 far as I can tell, so here we are… This time the announcement of a new
  53 free software tool to
  54 &lt;a href=&quot;https://framagit.org/Yvan-Masson/WhosWho&quot;&gt;create a school year
  55 book&lt;/a&gt; triggered my interest, and I decided to learn more about its
  56 author.&lt;/p&gt;
  57
  58 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  59
  60 &lt;p&gt;My name is Yvan MASSON, I live in France. I have my own one person
  61 business in computer services.  The work consist of visiting my
  62 customers (person&#39;s home, local authority, small business) to give
  63 advise, install computers and software, fix issues, and provide
  64 computing usage training.  I spend the rest of my time enjoying my
  65 family and promoting free software.&lt;/p&gt;
  66
  67 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is your approach for promoting free
  68 software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  69
  70 &lt;p&gt;When I think that free software could be suitable for someone, I
  71 explain what it is, with simple words, give a few known examples, and
  72 explain that while there is no fee it is a viable alternative in many
  73 situations. Most people are receptive when you explain how it is
  74 better (I simplify arguments here, I know that it is not so simple):
  75 Linux works on older hardware, there are no viruses, and the software
  76 can be audited to ensure user is not spied upon. I think the most
  77 important is to keep a clear but moderated speech: when you try to
  78 convince too much, people feel attacked and stop listening.&lt;/p&gt;
  79
  80 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
  81 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  82
  83 &lt;p&gt;I can not remember how I first heard of Skolelinux / Debian Edu,
  84 but probably on planet.debian.org. As I have been working for a
  85 school, I have interest in this type of project.
  86
  87 &lt;p&gt;The school I am involved in is a school for &quot;children&quot; between 14
  88 and 18 years old.  The French government has recommended free software
  89 since 2012, but they do not always use free software themselves.  The
  90 school computers are still using the Windows operating system, but all
  91 of them have the classic set of free software: Firefox ESR,
  92 LibreOffice (with the excellent extension Grammalecte that indicates
  93 French grammatical errors), SumatraPDF, Audacity, 7zip, KeePass2, VLC,
  94 GIMP, Inkscape…
  95
  96 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
  97 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  98
  99 &lt;p&gt;It is free software! Built on Debian, I am sure that users are not
 100 spied upon, and that it can run on low end hardware.  This last point
 101 is very important, because we really need to improve &quot;green IT&quot;.  I do
 102 not know enough about Skolelinux / Debian Edu to tell how it is better
 103 than another free software solution, but what I like is the &quot;all in
 104 one&quot; solution: everything has been thought of and prepared to ease
 105 installation and usage.&lt;/p&gt;
 106
 107 &lt;p&gt;I like Free Software because I hate using something that I can not
 108 understand. I do not say that I can understand everything nor that I
 109 want to understand everything, but knowing that someone / some company
 110 intentionally prevents me from understanding how things work is really
 111 unacceptable to me.&lt;/p&gt;
 112
 113 &lt;p&gt;Secondly, and more importantly, free software is a requirement to
 114 prevent abuses regarding human rights and environmental care.
 115 Humanity can not rely on tools that are in the hands of small group of
 116 people.&lt;/p&gt;
 117
 118 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 119 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 120
 121 &lt;p&gt;Again, I don&#39;t know this project enough. Maybe a dedicated website?
 122 Debian wiki works well for documentation, but is not very appealing to
 123 someone discovering the project. Also, as Skolelinux / Debian Edu uses
 124 OpenLDAP, it probably means that Windows workstations cannot use
 125 centralized authentication. Maybe the project could use Samba as an
 126 Active Directory domain controller instead, allowing Windows desktop
 127 usage when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;
 128
 129 &lt;p&gt;(Editors note: In fact Windows workstations can
 130 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Buster/HowTo/Samba&quot;&gt;use
 131 the centralized authentication in a Debian Edu setup&lt;/a&gt;, at least for
 132 some versions of Windows, but the fact that this is not well known can
 133 be seen as an indication of the need for better documentation and
 134 marketing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 135
 136 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 137
 138 &lt;p&gt;Nothing original: Debian testing/sid with Gnome desktop, Firefox,
 139 Thunderbird, LibreOffice…&lt;/p&gt;
 140
 141 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 142 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 143
 144 &lt;p&gt;Every effort to spread free software into schools is important,
 145 whatever it is. But I think, at least where I live, that IT
 146 professionals maintaining schools networks are still very &quot;Microsoft
 147 centric&quot;.  Schools will use any working solution, but they need people
 148 to install and maintain it.  How to make these professionals sensitive
 149 about free software and train them with solutions like Debian Edu /
 150 Skolelinux is a really good question :-)&lt;/p&gt;
 151 </description>
 152         </item>
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 154         <item>
 155                 <title>Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</title>
 156                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</link>
 157                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</guid>
 158                 <pubDate>Fri, 8 May 2020 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 159                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago,
 160 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html&quot;&gt;I
 161 wrote&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;https://jami.net/&quot;&gt;the Jami communication
 162 client&lt;/a&gt;, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication.  It
 163 handle both messages, audio and video.  It uses distributed hash
 164 tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
 165 other, which in my book is a plus.  I mentioned briefly that it could
 166 also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
 167 educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
 168 conferencing solution.  I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
 169 software, due to their &lt;a href=&quot;https://zoom.us/terms&quot;&gt;copyright
 170 license clauses&lt;/a&gt; prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
 171 to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
 172 Zoom meetings with free software clients.&lt;/p&gt;
 173
 174 &lt;p&gt;Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
 175 password set on the room.  The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
 176 (approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
 177 conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
 178 is not a great.  I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
 179 without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
 180 until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base.  But
 181 another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected.  I
 182 could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
 183 dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
 184 Zoom.  I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
 185 Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
 186 through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
 187 be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
 188 connecting via SIP.  There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
 189 Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end.  I got help from a
 190 very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part.  And being a
 191 very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
 192 Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
 193 connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.&lt;/p&gt;
 194
 195 &lt;p&gt;So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now.  The
 196 trick is already
 197 &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip&quot;&gt;documented
 198 from Zoom&lt;/a&gt;, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
 199 password.  What is most surprising about this is that the
 200 automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
 201 connect via SIP do not mention this.  The SIP address to use normally
 202 consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
 203 of the Zoom SIP gateway.  But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
 204 room ID in front of the at sign.  The format is &quot;&lt;tt&gt;[Meeting
 205 ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, and you can hear see how you
 206 can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
 207 presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
 208 The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
 209 then look like this (all using made up numbers):&lt;/p&gt;
 210
 211 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
 212 &lt;tt&gt;sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170&lt;/tt&gt;
 213 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 214
 215 &lt;p&gt;Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
 216 recommend this setup to others. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 217
 218 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 219 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 220 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 221 </description>
 222         </item>
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