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  11  <div class="title">
  12   <h1>
  13        <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  14
  15   </h1>
  16
  17  </div>
  18
  19  <p>Entries tagged "debian".</p>
  20
  21
  22
  23
  24 <div class="entry">
  25  <div class="title">
  26  <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>
  27  </div>
  28  <div class="date">
  29   2008-11-25 00:10
  30  </div>
  31
  32  <div class="body">
  33
  34 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
  35 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
  36 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
  37 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
  38 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
  39 notes are available on
  40 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
  41 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
  42 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
  43 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
  44 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
  45 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
  46 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
  47 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
  48 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
  49
  50 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
  51 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
  52
  53  </div>
  54  <div class="tags">
  55
  56
  57
  58   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>.
  59
  60  </div>
  61 </div>
  62 <div class="padding"></div>
  63
  64 <div class="entry">
  65  <div class="title">
  66  <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>
  67  </div>
  68  <div class="date">
  69   2008-12-07 12:00
  70  </div>
  71
  72  <div class="body">
  73
  74 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
  75 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
  76 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
  77 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
  78 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
  79 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
  80 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
  81 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
  82
  83 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
  84 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
  85 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
  86 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
  87 of these cards.</p>
  88
  89  </div>
  90  <div class="tags">
  91
  92
  93
  94   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>.
  95
  96  </div>
  97 </div>
  98 <div class="padding"></div>
  99
 100 <div class="entry">
 101  <div class="title">
 102  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
 103  </div>
 104  <div class="date">
 105   2009-02-15 11:50
 106  </div>
 107
 108  <div class="body">
 109
 110 <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
 111 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
 112 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
 113 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
 114 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
 115 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
 116 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
 117 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
 118 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
 119 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
 120 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
 121 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
 122
 123  </div>
 124  <div class="tags">
 125
 126
 127
 128   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>.
 129
 130  </div>
 131 </div>
 132 <div class="padding"></div>
 133
 134 <div class="entry">
 135  <div class="title">
 136  <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>
 137  </div>
 138  <div class="date">
 139   2009-03-29 20:30
 140  </div>
 141
 142  <div class="body">
 143
 144 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
 145 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
 146 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
 147 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
 148 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
 149 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
 150
 151 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
 152 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
 153 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
 154 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
 155 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
 156 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
 157 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
 158 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
 159 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
 160 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
 161 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
 162 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
 163 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
 164
 165 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
 166 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
 167 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
 168 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
 169
 170 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
 171 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
 172
 173 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
 174 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
 175 new IETF work group?</p>
 176
 177  </div>
 178  <div class="tags">
 179
 180
 181
 182   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>.
 183
 184  </div>
 185 </div>
 186 <div class="padding"></div>
 187
 188 <div class="entry">
 189  <div class="title">
 190  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
 191  </div>
 192  <div class="date">
 193   2009-03-29 21:00
 194  </div>
 195
 196  <div class="body">
 197
 198 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
 199 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
 200 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
 201 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
 202 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
 203 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
 204 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
 205 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
 206 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
 207 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
 208 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
 209 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
 210 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
 211 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
 212 now. :)</p>
 213
 214  </div>
 215  <div class="tags">
 216
 217
 218
 219   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>.
 220
 221  </div>
 222 </div>
 223 <div class="padding"></div>
 224
 225 <div class="entry">
 226  <div class="title">
 227  <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>
 228  </div>
 229  <div class="date">
 230   2009-03-30 11:50
 231  </div>
 232
 233  <div class="body">
 234
 235 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
 236 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
 237 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
 238 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
 239 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
 240 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
 241 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
 242 application.</p>
 243
 244 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
 245 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
 246 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
 247 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
 248 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
 249 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
 250 blocked from doing so.</p>
 251
 252 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
 253 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
 254 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
 255 requirements change.</p>
 256
 257 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
 258 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
 259 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
 260
 261  </div>
 262  <div class="tags">
 263
 264
 265
 266   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>.
 267
 268  </div>
 269 </div>
 270 <div class="padding"></div>
 271
 272 <div class="entry">
 273  <div class="title">
 274  <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>
 275  </div>
 276  <div class="date">
 277   2009-04-28 09:30
 278  </div>
 279
 280  <div class="body">
 281
 282 <p>Julien Blache
 283 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
 284 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
 285 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
 286 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
 287 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
 288 properties.</p>
 289
 290  </div>
 291  <div class="tags">
 292
 293
 294
 295   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>.
 296
 297  </div>
 298 </div>
 299 <div class="padding"></div>
 300
 301 <div class="entry">
 302  <div class="title">
 303  <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>
 304  </div>
 305  <div class="date">
 306   2009-05-02 15:00
 307  </div>
 308
 309  <div class="body">
 310
 311 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
 312 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
 313 do not yet know them.</p>
 314
 315 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
 316 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
 317 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
 318 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
 319 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
 320 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
 321 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
 322 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
 323 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
 324 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
 325 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
 326
 327 <p>The second one is
 328 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
 329 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
 330 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
 331 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
 332 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
 333 and the company behind it is running
 334 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
 335 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
 336 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
 337 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
 338 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
 339 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
 340 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
 341 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
 342
 343 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
 344 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
 345 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
 346 surrounded by today.</p>
 347
 348  </div>
 349  <div class="tags">
 350
 351
 352
 353   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>.
 354
 355  </div>
 356 </div>
 357 <div class="padding"></div>
 358
 359 <div class="entry">
 360  <div class="title">
 361  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
 362  </div>
 363  <div class="date">
 364   2009-05-02 15:30
 365  </div>
 366
 367  <div class="body">
 368
 369 <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
 370 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
 371 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
 372 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
 373 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
 374 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
 375 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
 376 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
 377 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
 378 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
 379 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
 380 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
 381 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
 382 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
 383 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
 384 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
 385 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
 386 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
 387 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
 388 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
 389
 390 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
 391 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
 392 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
 393 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
 394 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
 395 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
 396 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
 397 betydelige.</p>
 398
 399  </div>
 400  <div class="tags">
 401
 402
 403
 404   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>.
 405
 406  </div>
 407 </div>
 408 <div class="padding"></div>
 409
 410 <div class="entry">
 411  <div class="title">
 412  <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>
 413  </div>
 414  <div class="date">
 415   2009-05-07 22:30
 416  </div>
 417
 418  <div class="body">
 419
 420 <p>Kom over
 421 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
 422 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
 423 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
 424 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
 425 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
 426 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
 427 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
 428
 429  </div>
 430  <div class="tags">
 431
 432
 433
 434   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>.
 435
 436  </div>
 437 </div>
 438 <div class="padding"></div>
 439
 440 <div class="entry">
 441  <div class="title">
 442  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p__stander_om_piratkopiering_m__ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
 443  </div>
 444  <div class="date">
 445   2009-05-17 23:05
 446  </div>
 447
 448  <div class="body">
 449
 450 <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
 451 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
 452 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
 453 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
 454 dager siden kom
 455 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
 456 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
 457 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
 458 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
 459 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
 460
 461 <blockquote>
 462 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
 463 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
 464 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
 465 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
 466 </blockquote>
 467
 468 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
 469 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
 470 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
 471 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
 472 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
 473
 474 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
 475 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
 476 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
 477
 478  </div>
 479  <div class="tags">
 480
 481
 482
 483   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/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>.
 484
 485  </div>
 486 </div>
 487 <div class="padding"></div>
 488
 489 <div class="entry">
 490  <div class="title">
 491  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
 492  </div>
 493  <div class="date">
 494   2009-06-24 21:40
 495  </div>
 496
 497  <div class="body">
 498
 499 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
 500 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
 501 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
 502 funded
 503 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
 504 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
 505 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
 506 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
 507 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
 508 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
 509
 510 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
 511 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
 512 boot:</p>
 513
 514 <ul>
 515
 516 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
 517
 518 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
 519    clock is in UTC.</li>
 520
 521 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
 522    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 523    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
 524
 525 </ul>
 526
 527 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
 528 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
 529 Villegas</a>.
 530
 531 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
 532 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
 533 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
 534 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
 535 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
 536 using this.</p>
 537
 538 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
 539 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
 540 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
 541 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
 542 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
 543 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
 544 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
 545
 546  </div>
 547  <div class="tags">
 548
 549
 550
 551   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>.
 552
 553  </div>
 554 </div>
 555 <div class="padding"></div>
 556
 557 <div class="entry">
 558  <div class="title">
 559  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
 560  </div>
 561  <div class="date">
 562   2009-07-22 23:00
 563  </div>
 564
 565  <div class="body">
 566
 567 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
 568 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
 569 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
 570 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
 571 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
 572 the package up to date.</p>
 573
 574 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
 575 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
 576 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
 577 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
 578 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
 579 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
 580 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
 581 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
 582 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
 583 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
 584 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
 585 working on the future release.</p>
 586
 587 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
 588 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
 589
 590  </div>
 591  <div class="tags">
 592
 593
 594
 595   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>.
 596
 597  </div>
 598 </div>
 599 <div class="padding"></div>
 600
 601 <div class="entry">
 602  <div class="title">
 603  <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>
 604  </div>
 605  <div class="date">
 606   2009-07-27 23:50
 607  </div>
 608
 609  <div class="body">
 610
 611 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
 612 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
 613 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
 614 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
 615 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
 616 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
 617 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
 618
 619 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
 620 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
 621 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
 622
 623  </div>
 624  <div class="tags">
 625
 626
 627
 628   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>.
 629
 630  </div>
 631 </div>
 632 <div class="padding"></div>
 633
 634 <div class="entry">
 635  <div class="title">
 636  <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>
 637  </div>
 638  <div class="date">
 639   2010-05-06 23:25
 640  </div>
 641
 642  <div class="body">
 643
 644 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
 645 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
 646 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
 647 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
 648 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 649 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
 650 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
 651
 652 <blockquote><pre>
 653 CONCURRENCY=makefile
 654 </pre></blockquote>
 655
 656 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
 657 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
 658 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
 659 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
 660 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
 661 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
 662 make this happen.</p>
 663
 664 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
 665 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
 666 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
 667 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
 668 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
 669
 670 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
 671 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
 672 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
 673 fix the remaining issues.</p>
 674
 675 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 676 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 677 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 678 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 679
 680  </div>
 681  <div class="tags">
 682
 683
 684
 685   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>.
 686
 687  </div>
 688 </div>
 689 <div class="padding"></div>
 690
 691 <div class="entry">
 692  <div class="title">
 693  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
 694  </div>
 695  <div class="date">
 696   2010-05-13 22:20
 697  </div>
 698
 699  <div class="body">
 700
 701 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
 702 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
 703 has been
 704 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
 705
 706 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
 707 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
 708 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
 709 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
 710 based boot system.  Tollef is
 711 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
 712 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
 713 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
 714 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
 715 at the moment do not.</p>
 716
 717 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
 718 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
 719 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
 720 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
 721 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
 722 way forward.</p>
 723
 724 <p>In the mean time, based on the
 725 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
 726 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
 727 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
 728 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
 729 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
 730 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
 731 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
 732 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
 733
 734  </div>
 735  <div class="tags">
 736
 737
 738
 739   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>.
 740
 741  </div>
 742 </div>
 743 <div class="padding"></div>
 744
 745 <div class="entry">
 746  <div class="title">
 747  <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>
 748  </div>
 749  <div class="date">
 750   2010-05-14 21:10
 751  </div>
 752
 753  <div class="body">
 754
 755 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
 756 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
 757 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
 758 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
 759 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
 760 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
 761 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
 762 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
 763
 764 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
 765 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
 766 this on the collector host:</p>
 767
 768 <blockquote><pre>
 769 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
 770 </pre></blockquote>
 771
 772 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
 773 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
 774
 775 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
 776 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
 777 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
 778 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
 779 written yet.</p>
 780
 781  </div>
 782  <div class="tags">
 783
 784
 785
 786   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>.
 787
 788  </div>
 789 </div>
 790 <div class="padding"></div>
 791
 792 <div class="entry">
 793  <div class="title">
 794  <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>
 795  </div>
 796  <div class="date">
 797   2010-05-14 22:40
 798  </div>
 799
 800  <div class="body">
 801
 802 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
 803 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
 804 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
 805 expected, if I am to believe the
 806 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
 807 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
 808 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
 809 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
 810 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
 811 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
 812 version.</p>
 813
 814 More information about
 815 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 816 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
 817 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
 818 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
 819
 820 <blockquote><pre>
 821 CONCURRENCY=none
 822 </pre></blockquote>
 823
 824 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 825 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 826 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 827 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 828
 829  </div>
 830  <div class="tags">
 831
 832
 833
 834   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>.
 835
 836  </div>
 837 </div>
 838 <div class="padding"></div>
 839
 840 <div class="entry">
 841  <div class="title">
 842  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
 843  </div>
 844  <div class="date">
 845   2010-05-22 21:30
 846  </div>
 847
 848  <div class="body">
 849
 850 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
 851 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
 852 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
 853 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
 854
 855 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
 856 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
 857 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
 858 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
 859 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
 860 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
 861 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
 862 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
 863 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
 864 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
 865 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
 866 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
 867 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
 868 going to work.</p>
 869
 870 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
 871 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
 872 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
 873 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
 874 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
 875 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
 876 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
 877 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
 878 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
 879 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
 880 Edu.</p>
 881
 882 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
 883 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
 884 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
 885 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
 886 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
 887 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
 888
 889 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
 890 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
 891
 892  </div>
 893  <div class="tags">
 894
 895
 896
 897   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>.
 898
 899  </div>
 900 </div>
 901 <div class="padding"></div>
 902
 903 <div class="entry">
 904  <div class="title">
 905  <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>
 906  </div>
 907  <div class="date">
 908   2010-05-27 23:55
 909  </div>
 910
 911  <div class="body">
 912
 913 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
 914 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
 915 issues are known and should be solved:
 916
 917 <p><ul>
 918
 919 <li>The wicd package seen to
 920 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
 921 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
 922 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
 923 seem to be on the case.</li>
 924
 925 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
 926 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
 927 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
 928 maintainer is on the case.</li>
 929
 930 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
 931 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
 932 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
 933 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
 934 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
 935 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
 936 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
 937 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
 938
 939 </ul></p>
 940
 941 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
 942 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
 943 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
 944 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
 945
 946 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 947 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 948 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 949 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 950
 951 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
 952
 953  </div>
 954  <div class="tags">
 955
 956
 957
 958   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>.
 959
 960  </div>
 961 </div>
 962 <div class="padding"></div>
 963
 964 <div class="entry">
 965  <div class="title">
 966  <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>
 967  </div>
 968  <div class="date">
 969   2010-06-01 17:05
 970  </div>
 971
 972  <div class="body">
 973
 974 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
 975 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
 976 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
 977 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
 978 wait.</p>
 979
 980 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
 981 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
 982 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
 983 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
 984 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
 985 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
 986
 987 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
 988 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
 989 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
 990 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
 991 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
 992 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
 993 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
 994 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
 995
 996 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
 997
 998  </div>
 999  <div class="tags">
1000
1001
1002
1003   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>.
1004
1005  </div>
1006 </div>
1007 <div class="padding"></div>
1008
1009 <div class="entry">
1010  <div class="title">
1011  <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>
1012  </div>
1013  <div class="date">
1014   2010-06-03 12:05
1015  </div>
1016
1017  <div class="body">
1018
1019 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
1020 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
1021 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
1022 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
1023 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
1024
1025 <blockquote><pre>
1026 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
1027   vendor                    count
1028   Dell Computer Corporation     1
1029     PowerEdge 1750              1
1030   IBM                           1
1031     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
1032   Intel                         2
1033   [no-dmi-info]                 3
1034 maintainer:~#
1035 </pre></blockquote>
1036
1037 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
1038 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
1039 information listed with Intel as vendor and mo model, and virtual Xen
1040 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
1041 option to list the individual machines.</p>
1042
1043 <p>A larger list is
1044 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
1045 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
1046 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
1047 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
1048 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
1049 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
1050 collector.</p>
1051
1052  </div>
1053  <div class="tags">
1054
1055
1056
1057   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>.
1058
1059  </div>
1060 </div>
1061 <div class="padding"></div>
1062
1063 <div class="entry">
1064  <div class="title">
1065  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
1066  </div>
1067  <div class="date">
1068   2010-06-06 14:15
1069  </div>
1070
1071  <div class="body">
1072
1073 <p>Via the
1074 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
1075 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
1076 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
1077 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
1078 following the standards wars of today.</p>
1079
1080  </div>
1081  <div class="tags">
1082
1083
1084
1085   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>.
1086
1087  </div>
1088 </div>
1089 <div class="padding"></div>
1090
1091 <div class="entry">
1092  <div class="title">
1093  <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>
1094  </div>
1095  <div class="date">
1096   2010-06-06 23:55
1097  </div>
1098
1099  <div class="body">
1100
1101 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
1102 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
1103 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
1104 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
1105 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
1106 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
1107 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
1108
1109 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
1110 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
1111 COLUMNS):</p>
1112
1113 <blockquote><pre>
1114 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
1115 previous=N
1116 PREVLEVEL=
1117 RUNLEVEL=
1118 runlevel=S
1119 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
1120 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
1121 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
1122 </pre></blockquote>
1123
1124 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
1125 script.</p>
1126
1127 <blockquote><pre>
1128 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
1129 previous=N
1130 PREVLEVEL=N
1131 RUNLEVEL=S
1132 runlevel=S
1133 </pre></blockquote>
1134
1135 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
1136 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
1137 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
1138
1139 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
1140 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
1141 choice.</p>
1142
1143  </div>
1144  <div class="tags">
1145
1146
1147
1148   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>.
1149
1150  </div>
1151 </div>
1152 <div class="padding"></div>
1153
1154  <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>
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159 <div id="sidebar">
1160
1161 <h2>Archive</h2>
1162 <ul>
1163
1164 <li>2010
1165 <ul>
1166
1167 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
1168
1169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
1170
1171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
1172
1173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
1174
1175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
1176
1177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (6)</a></li>
1178
1179 </ul></li>
1180
1181 <li>2009
1182 <ul>
1183
1184 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
1185
1186 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
1187
1188 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
1189
1190 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
1191
1192 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
1193
1194 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
1195
1196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
1197
1198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
1199
1200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
1201
1202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
1203
1204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
1205
1206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
1207
1208 </ul></li>
1209
1210 <li>2008
1211 <ul>
1212
1213 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
1214
1215 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
1216
1217 </ul></li>
1218
1219 </ul>
1220
1221
1222
1223 <h2>Tags</h2>
1224 <ul>
1225
1226  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (11)</a></li>
1227
1228  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
1229
1230  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
1231
1232  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (24)</a></li>
1233
1234  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (25)</a></li>
1235
1236  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (35)</a></li>
1237
1238  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (1)</a></li>
1239
1240  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (6)</a></li>
1241
1242  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (2)</a></li>
1243
1244  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (1)</a></li>
1245
1246  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
1247
1248  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (5)</a></li>
1249
1250  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (67)</a></li>
1251
1252  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (75)</a></li>
1253
1254  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (12)</a></li>
1255
1256  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (11)</a></li>
1257
1258  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (10)</a></li>
1259
1260  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
1261
1262  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (8)</a></li>
1263
1264  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (3)</a></li>
1265
1266  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (12)</a></li>
1267
1268  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
1269
1270  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (10)</a></li>
1271
1272  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
1273
1274  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (6)</a></li>
1275
1276 </ul>
1277
1278 </div>
1279 </body>
1280 </html>