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  13   <h1>
  14        <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16   </h1>
  17
  18  </div>
  19
  20
  21
  22  <div class="entry">
  23   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/__pne_tr__dl__snett_er_et_samfunnsgode.html">Åpne trådløsnett er et samfunnsgode</a></div>
  24   <div class="date">2010-06-12 12:45</div>
  25   <div class="body">
  26 <p>Veldig glad for å oppdage via
  27 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/11/1841256/Finland-To-Legalize-Use-of-Unsecured-Wi-Fi">Slashdot</a>
  28 at folk i Finland har forstått at åpne trådløsnett er et samfunnsgode.
  29 Jeg ser på åpne trådløsnett som et fellesgode på linje med retten til
  30 ferdsel i utmark og retten til å bevege seg i strandsonen.  Jeg har
  31 glede av åpne trådløsnett når jeg finner dem, og deler gladelig nett
  32 med andre så lenge de ikke forstyrrer min bruk av eget nett.
  33 Nettkapasiteten er sjelden en begrensning ved normal browsing og enkel
  34 SSH-innlogging (som er min vanligste nettbruk), og nett kan brukes til
  35 så mye positivt og nyttig (som nyhetslesing, sjekke været, kontakte
  36 slekt og venner, holde seg oppdatert om politiske saker, kontakte
  37 organisasjoner og politikere, etc), at det for meg er helt urimelig å
  38 blokkere dette for alle som ikke gjør en flue fortred.  De som mener
  39 at potensialet for misbruk er grunn nok til å hindre all den positive
  40 og lovlydige bruken av et åpent trådløsnett har jeg dermed ingen
  41 forståelse for.  En kan ikke eksistensen av forbrytere styre hvordan
  42 samfunnet skal organiseres.  Da får en et kontrollsamfunn de færreste
  43 ønsker å leve i, og det at vi har et samfunn i Norge der tilliten til
  44 hverandre er høy gjør at samfunnet fungerer ganske godt.  Det bør vi
  45 anstrenge oss for å beholde.</p>
  46 </div>
  47   <div class="tags">
  48
  49
  50
  51    Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
  52
  53   </div>
  54  </div>
  55  <div class="padding"></div>
  56
  57  <div class="entry">
  58   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a></div>
  59   <div class="date">2010-06-11 22:50</div>
  60   <div class="body">
  61 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
  62 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
  63 have been discovered and reported in the process
  64 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
  65 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
  66 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
  67 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
  68 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
  69
  70 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
  71 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
  72 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
  73 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
  74 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
  75 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
  76
  77 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
  78 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
  79 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
  80 is created.  The bug report
  81 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
  82 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
  83 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
  84 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
  85 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
  86 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
  87 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
  88 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
  89 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
  90 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
  91 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
  92 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
  93 Debian Squeeze.</p>
  94
  95 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
  96 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
  97 trick:</p>
  98
  99 <blockquote><pre>
 100 #!/bin/sh
 101 set -ex
 102
 103 if [ "$1" ] ; then
 104     desktop=$1
 105 else
 106     desktop=gnome
 107 fi
 108
 109 from=lenny
 110 to=squeeze
 111
 112 exec &lt; /dev/null
 113 unset LANG
 114 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
 115 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
 116 fuser -mv .
 117 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
 118 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
 119 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
 120 #!/bin/sh
 121 exit 101
 122 EOF
 123 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
 124 exit_cleanup() {
 125     umount $tmpdir/proc
 126 }
 127 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
 128 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
 129 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
 130
 131 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
 132
 133 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
 134 # to return the correct answers.
 135 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
 136     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
 137
 138 # Include the desktop and laptop task
 139 for test in desktop laptop ; do
 140     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
 141 #!/bin/sh
 142 exit 2
 143 EOF
 144     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
 145 done
 146
 147 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
 148 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
 149 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
 150 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
 151
 152 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
 153 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
 154 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
 155 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
 156 fuser -mv
 157 </pre></blockquote>
 158
 159 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
 160 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
 161 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
 162 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
 163 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
 164 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
 165
 166 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
 167 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
 168 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
 169 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
 170 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
 171 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
 172 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
 173
 174 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
 175 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
 176 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
 177 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
 178 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
 179 packages.</p>
 180 </div>
 181   <div class="tags">
 182
 183
 184
 185    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>.
 186
 187   </div>
 188  </div>
 189  <div class="padding"></div>
 190
 191  <div class="entry">
 192   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html">Skolelinux er laget for sentraldrifting, naturligvis</a></div>
 193   <div class="date">2010-06-09 12:30</div>
 194   <div class="body">
 195 <p>Det er merkelig hvordan myter om Skolelinux overlever.  En slik
 196 myte er at Skolelinux ikke kan sentraldriftes og ha sentralt plasserte
 197 tjenermaskiner.  I siste Computerworld Norge er
 198 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article169432.ece">IT-sjef
 199 Viggo Billdal i Steinkjer intervjuet</a>, og forteller uten
 200 blygsel:</p>
 201
 202 <blockquote><p>Vi hadde Skolelinux, men det har vi sluttet med. Vi testet
 203 om det lønte seg med Microsoft eller en åpen plattform. Vi fant ut at
 204 Microsoft egentlig var totalt sett bedre egnet. Det var store
 205 driftskostnader med Skolelinux, blant annet på grunn av
 206 desentraliserte servere. Det var komplisert, så vi gikk vekk fra det
 207 og bruker nå bare Windows.</p></blockquote>
 208
 209 <p>En <a
 210 href="https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/bruker/2010-June/009101.html">rask
 211 sjekk</a> mot den norske brukerlista i Skolelinuxprosjektet forteller
 212 at Steinkjers forsøk foregikk fram til 2004/2005, og at Røysing skole
 213 i Steinkjer skal ha vært svært fornøyd med Skolelinux men at kommunen
 214 overkjørte skolen og krevde at de gikk over til Windows.  Et søk på
 215 nettet sendte meg til
 216 <a href="http://www.dn.no/multimedia/archive/00090/Dagens_it_nr__18_90826a.pdf">Dagens
 217 IT nr. 18 2005</a> hvor en kan lese på side 18:</p>
 218
 219 <blockquote><p>Inge Tømmerås ved Røysing skole i Steinkjer kjører ennå
 220 Microsoft, men forteller at kompetanseutfordringen med Skolelinux ikke
 221 var så stor.   Jeg syntes Skolelinux var utrolig lett å drifte uten
 222 forkunnskaper. Men man må jo selvsagt ha tilgang på ekstern kompetanse
 223 til installasjoner og maskinvarefeil, sier Tømmerås.</p></blockquote>
 224
 225 <p>Som systemarkitekten bak Skolelinux, kan jeg bare riste på hodet
 226 over påstanden om at Skolelinux krever desentraliserte tjenere.
 227 Skolelinux-arkitekturen er laget for sentralisert drift og plassering
 228 av tjenerne lokalt eller sentralt alt etter behov og nettkapasitet.
 229 Den er modellert på nettverks- og tjenerløsningen som brukes på
 230 Universitetet i Tromsø og Oslo, der jeg jobber med utvikling av
 231 driftstjenester.  Dette er det heldigvis noen som har fått med seg, og
 232 jeg er glad for å kunne sitere fra en kommentar på den overnevnte
 233 artikkelen.  Min venn og gamle kollega Sturle Sunde forteller der:
 234
 235 <blockquote>
 236 <p>I Flora kommune køyrer vi Skulelinux på skular med alt frå 15 til
 237 meir enn 500 elevar. Dei store skulane har eigen tenar, for det er
 238 mest praktisk. Eg, som er driftsansvarleg for heile nettet, ser
 239 sjeldan dei tenarane fysisk, men at dei står der gjer skulane mindre
 240 avhengige av eksterne linjer som er trege eller dyre. Dei minste
 241 skulane har ikkje eigen tenar. Å bruke sentral tenar er heller ikkje
 242 noko problem. Småskulane klarar seg fint med 1 mbit-linje til ein
 243 sentral tenar eller tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
 244
 245 <p>Det beste med Skulelinux er halvtjukke klientar. Dei treng ikkje
 246 harddisk og brukar minimalt med ressursar på tenaren fordi dei køyrer
 247 programma lokalt. Eit klasserom med 30 sju-åtte år gamle maskiner har
 248 mykje meir CPU og RAM totalt enn nokon moderne tenar til under
 249 millionen. Det trengst to kommandoar på den sentrale tenaren for å
 250 oppdatere alle klientane, både tynne og halvtjukke. Vi har ingen
 251 problem med diskar som ryk heller, som var eit problem før fordi
 252 elevane sat og sparka i maskinene. Og dei krev lite bandbreidde i
 253 nettet, so det er fullt mogleg å køyre slike på småskular med trege
 254 linjer mot tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
 255
 256 <p>Flora kommune har nesten 800 Linux-maskiner i sitt skulenett, og
 257 ein person som tek seg av drift av heile nettet, inkludert tenarar,
 258 klientar, operativsystem, programvare, heimekontorløysing og
 259 administrasjon av brukarar.</p>
 260
 261 <p>No skal det seiast at vi ikkje køyrer rein Skulelinux ut av
 262 boksen. Vi har gjort ein del tilpassingar mot noko Novell-greier som
 263 var der frå før, og som har komplisert installasjonen vår. Etter at
 264 oppsettet var gjort har løysinga vore stabil og kravd minimalt med
 265 arbeid.</p>
 266 </blockquote>
 267
 268 <p>Jeg vet at Narvik, Harstad og Oslo er kommuner der Skolelinux
 269 sentraldriftes med sentrale tjenere.  Det forteller meg at Steinkjers
 270 IT-sjef neppe bør skylde på Skolelinux-løsningen for sine 5 år gamle
 271 minner.</p>
 272 </div>
 273   <div class="tags">
 274
 275
 276
 277    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 278
 279   </div>
 280  </div>
 281  <div class="padding"></div>
 282
 283  <div class="entry">
 284   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a></div>
 285   <div class="date">2010-06-06 23:55</div>
 286   <div class="body">
 287 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
 288 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
 289 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
 290 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
 291 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
 292 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
 293 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
 294
 295 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
 296 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
 297 COLUMNS):</p>
 298
 299 <blockquote><pre>
 300 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
 301 previous=N
 302 PREVLEVEL=
 303 RUNLEVEL=
 304 runlevel=S
 305 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
 306 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
 307 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
 308 </pre></blockquote>
 309
 310 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
 311 script.</p>
 312
 313 <blockquote><pre>
 314 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
 315 previous=N
 316 PREVLEVEL=N
 317 RUNLEVEL=S
 318 runlevel=S
 319 </pre></blockquote>
 320
 321 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
 322 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
 323 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
 324
 325 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
 326 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
 327 choice.</p>
 328 </div>
 329   <div class="tags">
 330
 331
 332
 333    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>.
 334
 335   </div>
 336  </div>
 337  <div class="padding"></div>
 338
 339  <div class="entry">
 340   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a></div>
 341   <div class="date">2010-06-06 14:15</div>
 342   <div class="body">
 343 <p>Via the
 344 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
 345 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
 346 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
 347 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
 348 following the standards wars of today.</p>
 349 </div>
 350   <div class="tags">
 351
 352
 353
 354    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>.
 355
 356   </div>
 357  </div>
 358  <div class="padding"></div>
 359
 360  <div class="entry">
 361   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a></div>
 362   <div class="date">2010-06-03 12:05</div>
 363   <div class="body">
 364 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
 365 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
 366 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
 367 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
 368 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
 369
 370 <blockquote><pre>
 371 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
 372   vendor                    count
 373   Dell Computer Corporation     1
 374     PowerEdge 1750              1
 375   IBM                           1
 376     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
 377   Intel                         2
 378   [no-dmi-info]                 3
 379 maintainer:~#
 380 </pre></blockquote>
 381
 382 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
 383 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
 384 information listed with Intel as vendor and mo model, and virtual Xen
 385 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
 386 option to list the individual machines.</p>
 387
 388 <p>A larger list is
 389 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
 390 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
 391 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
 392 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
 393 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
 394 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
 395 collector.</p>
 396 </div>
 397   <div class="tags">
 398
 399
 400
 401    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>.
 402
 403   </div>
 404  </div>
 405  <div class="padding"></div>
 406
 407  <div class="entry">
 408   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p___norsk__mot_sykkel.html">Togsatsing på norsk, mot sykkel</a></div>
 409   <div class="date">2010-06-02 23:45</div>
 410   <div class="body">
 411 <p>Det står dårlig til med toget når en finner på å la det
 412 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3677060.ece">kappkjøre
 413 med sykkel</a>...  Jeg tror det trengs strukturendringer for å få
 414 fikset på togproblemene i Norge.</p>
 415
 416 <p>Mon tro hva toglinje mellom Narvik og Tromsø ville hatt slags
 417 effekt på området der?</p>
 418 </div>
 419   <div class="tags">
 420
 421
 422
 423    Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
 424
 425   </div>
 426  </div>
 427  <div class="padding"></div>
 428
 429  <div class="entry">
 430   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a></div>
 431   <div class="date">2010-06-01 17:05</div>
 432   <div class="body">
 433 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
 434 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
 435 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
 436 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
 437 wait.</p>
 438
 439 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
 440 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
 441 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
 442 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
 443 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
 444 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
 445
 446 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
 447 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
 448 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
 449 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
 450 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
 451 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
 452 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
 453 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
 454
 455 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
 456 </div>
 457   <div class="tags">
 458
 459
 460
 461    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>.
 462
 463   </div>
 464  </div>
 465  <div class="padding"></div>
 466
 467  <div class="entry">
 468   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a></div>
 469   <div class="date">2010-05-27 23:55</div>
 470   <div class="body">
 471 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
 472 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
 473 issues are known and should be solved:
 474
 475 <p><ul>
 476
 477 <li>The wicd package seen to
 478 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
 479 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
 480 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
 481 seem to be on the case.</li>
 482
 483 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
 484 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
 485 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
 486 maintainer is on the case.</li>
 487
 488 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
 489 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
 490 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
 491 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
 492 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
 493 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
 494 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
 495 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
 496
 497 </ul></p>
 498
 499 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
 500 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
 501 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
 502 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
 503
 504 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 505 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 506 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 507 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 508
 509 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
 510 </div>
 511   <div class="tags">
 512
 513
 514
 515    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>.
 516
 517   </div>
 518  </div>
 519  <div class="padding"></div>
 520
 521  <div class="entry">
 522   <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a></div>
 523   <div class="date">2010-05-22 21:30</div>
 524   <div class="body">
 525 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
 526 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
 527 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
 528 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
 529
 530 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
 531 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
 532 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
 533 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
 534 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
 535 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
 536 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
 537 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
 538 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
 539 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
 540 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
 541 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
 542 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
 543 going to work.</p>
 544
 545 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
 546 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
 547 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
 548 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
 549 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
 550 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
 551 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
 552 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
 553 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
 554 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
 555 Edu.</p>
 556
 557 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
 558 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
 559 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
 560 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
 561 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
 562 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
 563
 564 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
 565 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
 566 </div>
 567   <div class="tags">
 568
 569
 570
 571    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>.
 572
 573   </div>
 574  </div>
 575  <div class="padding"></div>
 576
 577  <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="index.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS feed" width="36" height="14"></a></p>
 578
 579 <div id="sidebar">
 580
 581
 582
 583
 584
 585 <h2>Archive</h2>
 586 <ul>
 587
 588 <li>2010
 589 <ul>
 590
 591 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
 592
 593 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
 594
 595 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
 596
 597 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
 598
 599 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 600
 601 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (8)</a></li>
 602
 603 </ul></li>
 604
 605 <li>2009
 606 <ul>
 607
 608 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
 609
 610 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
 611
 612 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
 613
 614 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
 615
 616 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 617
 618 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
 619
 620 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
 621
 622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
 623
 624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
 625
 626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
 627
 628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
 629
 630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
 631
 632 </ul></li>
 633
 634 <li>2008
 635 <ul>
 636
 637 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
 638
 639 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
 640
 641 </ul></li>
 642
 643 </ul>
 644
 645
 646
 647 <h2>Tags</h2>
 648 <ul>
 649
 650  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (11)</a></li>
 651
 652  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
 653
 654  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
 655
 656  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (10)</a></li>
 657
 658  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (25)</a></li>
 659
 660  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (25)</a></li>
 661
 662  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (36)</a></li>
 663
 664  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (1)</a></li>
 665
 666  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (7)</a></li>
 667
 668  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (2)</a></li>
 669
 670  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (1)</a></li>
 671
 672  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
 673
 674  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (5)</a></li>
 675
 676  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (68)</a></li>
 677
 678  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (76)</a></li>
 679
 680  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (13)</a></li>
 681
 682  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (12)</a></li>
 683
 684  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (10)</a></li>
 685
 686  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
 687
 688  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (9)</a></li>
 689
 690  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (3)</a></li>
 691
 692  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (12)</a></li>
 693
 694  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
 695
 696  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (10)</a></li>
 697
 698  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
 699
 700  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (6)</a></li>
 701
 702 </ul>
 703
 704 </div>
 705
 706 <p style="text-align: right">
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