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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     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          2nd July 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
  32 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
  33 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
  34 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
  35 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
  36 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
  37 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
  38 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
  39 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
  40 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
  41 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
  42 Youtube too</a>.</p>
  43
  44 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
  45 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
  46 pages</a> to view them.</p>
  47
  48 <ul>
  49
  50   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
  51       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
  52
  53   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
  54
  55   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
  56       (Olav Helland)</li>
  57
  58   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
  59       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
  60
  61   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
  62
  63   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
  64
  65   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
  66       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
  67
  68   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
  69
  70   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
  71
  72   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
  73
  74   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
  75
  76   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
  77       Sevens)</li>
  78
  79   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
  80       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
  81
  82   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
  83       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
  84
  85   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
  86       Dyvik)</li>
  87
  88   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
  89
  90 </ul>
  91
  92 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
  93 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
  94 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
  95 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
  96 which sent me on a detour to
  97 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
  98 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
  99 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
 100
 101       </div>
 102       <div class="tags">
 103
 104
 105         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 106
 107
 108       </div>
 109     </div>
 110     <div class="padding"></div>
 111
 112     <div class="entry">
 113       <div class="title">
 114         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
 115       </div>
 116       <div class="date">
 117         15th June 2015
 118       </div>
 119       <div class="body">
 120         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
 121 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
 122 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
 123 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
 124 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
 125 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
 126 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
 127 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
 128 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
 129
 130 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
 131 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
 132 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
 133 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
 134
 135 <pre>
 136 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
 137
 138 real    0m2.841s
 139 user    0m0.184s
 140 sys     0m0.036s
 141 %
 142 </pre>
 143
 144 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
 145 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
 146 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
 147 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
 148 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
 149
 150 <pre>
 151 digraph ownership {
 152 rankdir = LR;
 153 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
 154 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
 155 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
 156 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
 157 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
 158 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
 159 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
 160 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
 161 }
 162 </pre>
 163
 164 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
 165 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
 166 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
 167
 168 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
 169
 170 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
 171 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
 172 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
 173 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
 174 of the ownership links.</p>
 175
 176 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
 177 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
 178
 179 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
 180 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
 181 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
 182 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
 183 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
 184 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
 185 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
 186
 187       </div>
 188       <div class="tags">
 189
 190
 191         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
 192
 193
 194       </div>
 195     </div>
 196     <div class="padding"></div>
 197
 198     <div class="entry">
 199       <div class="title">
 200         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
 201       </div>
 202       <div class="date">
 203         11th June 2015
 204       </div>
 205       <div class="body">
 206         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
 207 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
 208 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
 209 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
 210 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
 211 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
 212 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
 213 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
 214 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
 215 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
 216 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
 217 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
 218 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
 219
 220 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
 221 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
 222 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
 223 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
 224 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
 225 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
 226 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
 227 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
 228 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
 229 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
 230
 231 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
 232 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
 233 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
 234 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
 235 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
 236 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
 237 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
 238 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
 239 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
 240
 241 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
 242 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
 243 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
 244 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
 245 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
 246 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
 247 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
 248 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
 249 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
 250 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
 251 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
 252
 253       </div>
 254       <div class="tags">
 255
 256
 257         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 258
 259
 260       </div>
 261     </div>
 262     <div class="padding"></div>
 263
 264     <div class="entry">
 265       <div class="title">
 266         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
 267       </div>
 268       <div class="date">
 269         10th May 2015
 270       </div>
 271       <div class="body">
 272         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
 273 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
 274 criminal or not, are
 275 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
 276 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
 277 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
 278 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
 279 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
 280 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
 281 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
 282 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
 283 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
 284 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
 285 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
 286 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
 287 the police.</p>
 288
 289 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
 290 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
 291 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
 292 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
 293 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
 294 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
 295 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
 296 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
 297 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
 298 is good to know that
 299 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
 300 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
 301 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
 302 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
 303 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
 304 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
 305 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
 306 business getting access to that information.</p>
 307
 308 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
 309 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
 310 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
 311 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
 312 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
 313 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
 314 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
 315
 316 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
 317 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
 318 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
 319 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
 320
 321 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
 322 really could make such decision, I wrote
 323 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
 324 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
 325 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
 326
 327       </div>
 328       <div class="tags">
 329
 330
 331         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 332
 333
 334       </div>
 335     </div>
 336     <div class="padding"></div>
 337
 338     <div class="entry">
 339       <div class="title">
 340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
 341       </div>
 342       <div class="date">
 343          1st May 2015
 344       </div>
 345       <div class="body">
 346         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
 347 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
 348 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
 349 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
 350 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
 351 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
 352 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
 353
 354 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
 355 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
 356 the 2012 numbers are from
 357 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
 358 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
 359 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
 360 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
 361 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
 362
 363 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
 364 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
 365 enough.  See for example a
 366 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
 367 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
 368 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
 369 to get the storage requirements.</p>
 370
 371 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
 372 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
 373 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
 374 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
 375 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
 376
 377 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
 378 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
 379 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
 380 and large organisations:</p>
 381
 382 <table border="1">
 383 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
 384 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
 385 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
 386 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
 387 </table>
 388
 389 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
 390 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
 391 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
 392 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
 393 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
 394 collecting the data?</p>
 395
 396       </div>
 397       <div class="tags">
 398
 399
 400         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 401
 402
 403       </div>
 404     </div>
 405     <div class="padding"></div>
 406
 407     <div class="entry">
 408       <div class="title">
 409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
 410       </div>
 411       <div class="date">
 412         26th April 2015
 413       </div>
 414       <div class="body">
 415         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
 416 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
 417 announcement today</a>:</p>
 418
 419 <pre>
 420 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
 421 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
 422 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
 423 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
 424
 425 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
 426 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
 427 later today ;)
 428
 429 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
 430 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
 431 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
 432 be possible and encouraged!
 433
 434 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
 435 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
 436
 437 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
 438 operating system for schools, universities and other
 439 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
 440 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
 441 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
 442 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
 443 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
 444 days.
 445
 446 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
 447 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
 448 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
 449 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
 450
 451 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
 452 installation instructions are available, including detailed
 453 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
 454 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
 455 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
 456 least 5 characters!
 457
 458 == Where to download ==
 459
 460 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
 461 can be downloaded at the following locations:
 462
 463     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
 464     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
 465
 466 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
 467
 468 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
 469 available, with more software included (saving additional download
 470 time):
 471
 472     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
 473     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
 474
 475 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
 476
 477 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
 478 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
 479 options.
 480
 481 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
 482
 483 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
 484 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
 485
 486 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
 487 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
 488 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
 489 online version of the translated manual.
 490
 491 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
 492 release notes and the installation manual:
 493 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
 494 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
 495
 496
 497 == Errata / known problems ==
 498
 499     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
 500     DHCP (#780461).
 501
 502     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
 503
 504 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
 505 hostname immediately.
 506
 507 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
 508 more current and complete list.
 509
 510 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
 511
 512 === Software updates ===
 513
 514 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
 515
 516  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
 517    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
 518    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
 519
 520  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
 521    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
 522    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
 523    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
 524      the others see the manual.
 525  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
 526  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
 527  * GOsa 2.7.4
 528  * LTSP 5.5.4
 529  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
 530  * new boot framework: systemd
 531  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
 532  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
 533  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
 534  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
 535  * golearn 0.9
 536  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
 537  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
 538  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
 539  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
 540    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
 541
 542 === Installation changes ===
 543
 544     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
 545     for the hardware present.
 546
 547 === Fixed bugs ===
 548
 549 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
 550 from a user perspective:
 551
 552  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
 553    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
 554    information is corrected (710362)
 555
 556  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
 557
 558 === Sugar desktop removed ===
 559
 560 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
 561 available in Debian Edu jessie.
 562
 563
 564 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
 565
 566 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
 567 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 568 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
 569 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 570 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 571 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 572 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 573 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
 574 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 575 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 576 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 577 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
 578 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
 579 environment.
 580
 581 == About Debian ==
 582
 583 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
 584 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
 585 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
 586 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
 587 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
 588 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
 589 operating system.
 590
 591 == Thanks ==
 592
 593 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
 594 You rock.
 595 </pre>
 596
 597       </div>
 598       <div class="tags">
 599
 600
 601         Tags: <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>.
 602
 603
 604       </div>
 605     </div>
 606     <div class="padding"></div>
 607
 608     <div class="entry">
 609       <div class="title">
 610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
 611       </div>
 612       <div class="date">
 613         15th April 2015
 614       </div>
 615       <div class="body">
 616         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
 617 computer system for schools I've involved in,
 618 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
 619 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
 620 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
 621 Agarwal.</p>
 622
 623 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 624
 625 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
 626 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
 627 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
 628 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
 629 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
 630 few software start-ups as well.</p>
 631
 632 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 633 project?</strong></p>
 634
 635 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
 636 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
 637 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
 638 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
 639 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
 640 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
 641 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
 642
 643 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 644 Edu?</strong></p>
 645
 646 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
 647 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
 648 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
 649 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
 650 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
 651 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
 652 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
 653 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
 654
 655 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
 656 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
 657 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
 658 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
 659 for the developer per-se.</p>
 660
 661 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 662 Edu?</strong></p>
 663
 664 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
 665 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
 666 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
 667
 668 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
 669 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
 670 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
 671 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
 672 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
 673 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
 674 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
 675
 676 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
 677 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
 678 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
 679
 680 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
 681 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
 682 interactive manner. While sites such as the
 683 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
 684 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
 685 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
 686 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
 687 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
 688 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
 689 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
 690 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
 691 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
 692 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
 693 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
 694
 695 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
 696 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
 697 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
 698 also be used.</p>
 699
 700 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
 701 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
 702 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
 703 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
 704 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
 705 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
 706 the user's input.</p>
 707
 708 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
 709 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
 710 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
 711 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
 712 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
 713 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
 714 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
 715 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
 716
 717 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
 718 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
 719 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
 720 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
 721 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
 722 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
 723 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
 724 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
 725
 726 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 727
 728 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
 729 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
 730 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
 731 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
 732 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
 733
 734 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 735 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 736
 737 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
 738 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
 739 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
 740 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
 741 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
 742 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
 743
 744 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
 745 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
 746 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
 747 well.</p>
 748
 749 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
 750 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
 751 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
 752 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
 753
 754 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
 755 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
 756 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
 757 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
 758 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
 759 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
 760 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
 761 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
 762 releases.</p>
 763
 764 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
 765 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
 766 is aimed at.
 767
 768 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
 769 around 2 years, and
 770 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
 771 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
 772 there was :</p>
 773
 774 <ol>
 775
 776   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
 777    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
 778    portion/syllabus given.</li>
 779
 780   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
 781    is in the syllabus.</li>
 782
 783   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
 784    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
 785    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
 786    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
 787    as recognizable as say a
 788    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
 789    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
 790    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
 791    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
 792    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
 793    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
 794
 795 </ol>
 796
 797       </div>
 798       <div class="tags">
 799
 800
 801         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
 802
 803
 804       </div>
 805     </div>
 806     <div class="padding"></div>
 807
 808     <div class="entry">
 809       <div class="title">
 810         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="date">
 813          7th April 2015
 814       </div>
 815       <div class="body">
 816         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
 817 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
 818 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
 819
 820 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
 821 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
 822 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
 823 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
 824 part of my involvement with the
 825 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
 826 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
 827 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
 828 Hackathon with our friends
 829 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
 830 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
 831 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
 832 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
 833
 834 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
 835 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
 836
 837       </div>
 838       <div class="tags">
 839
 840
 841         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
 842
 843
 844       </div>
 845     </div>
 846     <div class="padding"></div>
 847
 848     <div class="entry">
 849       <div class="title">
 850         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
 851       </div>
 852       <div class="date">
 853          4th April 2015
 854       </div>
 855       <div class="body">
 856         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
 857 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
 858 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
 859 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
 860 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
 861 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
 862 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
 863 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 864 project pages.  You can also check out the
 865 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
 866 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 867 and HTML version available in the
 868 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
 869 directory</a>.</p>
 870
 871 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
 872 you find any.</p>
 873
 874       </div>
 875       <div class="tags">
 876
 877
 878         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 879
 880
 881       </div>
 882     </div>
 883     <div class="padding"></div>
 884
 885     <div class="entry">
 886       <div class="title">
 887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
 888       </div>
 889       <div class="date">
 890          9th March 2015
 891       </div>
 892       <div class="body">
 893         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
 894 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
 895 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
 896 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
 897 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
 898 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
 899 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
 900 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
 901 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
 902 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
 903 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
 904 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
 905 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
 906 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
 907
 908 <p>The list of NUUG videos
 909 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
 910 include things like a
 911 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
 912 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
 913 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
 914 re-implementation</a>, the
 915 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
 916 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
 917 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
 918 video</A> and many others.</p>
 919
 920 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
 921 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
 922 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
 923 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
 924 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
 925 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
 926 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
 927 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
 928 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
 929 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
 930
 931 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
 932 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
 933 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
 934 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
 935 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
 936 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
 937 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
 938 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
 939 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
 940 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
 941
 942       </div>
 943       <div class="tags">
 944
 945
 946         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 947
 948
 949       </div>
 950     </div>
 951     <div class="padding"></div>
 952
 953     <div class="entry">
 954       <div class="title">
 955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
 956       </div>
 957       <div class="date">
 958         28th February 2015
 959       </div>
 960       <div class="body">
 961         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
 962 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
 963 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
 964 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
 965 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
 966 made for
 967 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
 968 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
 969 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
 970 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
 971 a friend have
 972 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
 973 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
 974 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
 975 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
 976 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
 977 it happen ourselves.
 978 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
 979 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
 980 is.</p>
 981
 982 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
 983 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
 984
 985       </div>
 986       <div class="tags">
 987
 988
 989         Tags: <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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 990
 991
 992       </div>
 993     </div>
 994     <div class="padding"></div>
 995
 996     <div class="entry">
 997       <div class="title">
 998         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
 999       </div>
1000       <div class="date">
1001         25th February 2015
1002       </div>
1003       <div class="body">
1004         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
1005 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
1006 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
1007 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
1008 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
1009 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
1010 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
1011 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
1012 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
1013 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
1014 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
1015 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
1016 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
1017 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
1018 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
1019 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
1020 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
1021
1022 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
1023 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
1024 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
1025 with VLC.</p>
1026
1027 <ul>
1028   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
1029   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
1030 </ul>
1031
1032 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
1033 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
1034 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
1035 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
1036 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
1037 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
1038 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
1039
1040 <blockquote><pre>
1041 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
1042  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
1043  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
1044 </pre></blockquote>
1045
1046 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
1047 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
1048 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
1049 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
1050
1051       </div>
1052       <div class="tags">
1053
1054
1055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1056
1057
1058       </div>
1059     </div>
1060     <div class="padding"></div>
1061
1062     <div class="entry">
1063       <div class="title">
1064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
1065       </div>
1066       <div class="date">
1067         10th February 2015
1068       </div>
1069       <div class="body">
1070         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
1071 that
1072 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
1073 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
1074 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
1075 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
1076 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
1077 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
1078 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
1079 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
1080 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
1081 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
1082 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
1083 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
1084 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
1085 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
1086 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
1087
1088 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
1089 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
1090 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
1091 controversy about these scanners.</p>
1092
1093 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
1094 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
1095 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
1096
1097       </div>
1098       <div class="tags">
1099
1100
1101         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
1102
1103
1104       </div>
1105     </div>
1106     <div class="padding"></div>
1107
1108     <div class="entry">
1109       <div class="title">
1110         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
1111       </div>
1112       <div class="date">
1113          8th February 2015
1114       </div>
1115       <div class="body">
1116         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
1117 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
1118 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
1119 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
1120 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
1121 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
1122 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
1123 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
1124 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
1125 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
1126 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
1127 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
1128
1129 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
1130 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
1131 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
1132 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
1133
1134 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
1135 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
1136 distribute the TV content.  The
1137 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
1138 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
1139 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
1140 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
1141 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
1142 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
1143 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
1144 following activity, we now have the schedule
1145 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
1146 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
1147 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
1148 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
1149
1150 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
1151 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
1152 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
1153 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
1154 streams are working as they should.</p>
1155
1156       </div>
1157       <div class="tags">
1158
1159
1160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1161
1162
1163       </div>
1164     </div>
1165     <div class="padding"></div>
1166
1167     <div class="entry">
1168       <div class="title">
1169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
1170       </div>
1171       <div class="date">
1172         12th January 2015
1173       </div>
1174       <div class="body">
1175         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
1176 Foundation</a> announced a new video
1177 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
1178 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
1179 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
1180 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
1181 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
1182 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
1183
1184 <p>But today I was told that
1185 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
1186 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
1187 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
1188 available in
1189 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
1190 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
1191 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
1192
1193 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
1194 Libreplanet
1195 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
1196 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
1197
1198       </div>
1199       <div class="tags">
1200
1201
1202         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1203
1204
1205       </div>
1206     </div>
1207     <div class="padding"></div>
1208
1209     <div class="entry">
1210       <div class="title">
1211         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
1212       </div>
1213       <div class="date">
1214         30th December 2014
1215       </div>
1216       <div class="body">
1217         <p>I am very happy that we in the
1218 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
1219 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
1220 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
1221 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
1222 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
1223 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
1224 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
1225 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
1226 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
1227 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
1228
1229 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
1230 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
1231 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
1232 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
1233 reports in public.</p>
1234
1235       </div>
1236       <div class="tags">
1237
1238
1239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1240
1241
1242       </div>
1243     </div>
1244     <div class="padding"></div>
1245
1246     <div class="entry">
1247       <div class="title">
1248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
1249       </div>
1250       <div class="date">
1251         19th December 2014
1252       </div>
1253       <div class="body">
1254         <p>So, Sony caved in
1255 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
1256 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
1257 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
1258 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
1259 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
1260 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
1261 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
1262 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
1263 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
1264 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
1265 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
1266 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
1267 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
1268
1269 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
1270 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
1271 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
1272 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
1273
1274 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
1275 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
1276 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
1277 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
1278 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
1279 income. :)</p>
1280
1281       </div>
1282       <div class="tags">
1283
1284
1285         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1286
1287
1288       </div>
1289     </div>
1290     <div class="padding"></div>
1291
1292     <div class="entry">
1293       <div class="title">
1294         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
1295       </div>
1296       <div class="date">
1297         22nd November 2014
1298       </div>
1299       <div class="body">
1300         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1301 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
1302 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1303 courtesy of
1304 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1305 Schubert</a> and
1306 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1307 McVittie</a>.
1308
1309 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1310 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1311 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
1312 you upgrade:</p>
1313
1314 <p><blockquote><pre>
1315 Package: systemd-sysv
1316 Pin: release o=Debian
1317 Pin-Priority: -1
1318 </pre></blockquote><p>
1319
1320 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1321 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1322 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1323 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1324 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1325
1326 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1327 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1328 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1329 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1330 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1331 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1332
1333 <p><blockquote><pre>
1334 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1335 </pre></blockquote><p>
1336
1337 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1338
1339 <p><blockquote><pre>
1340 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1341 </pre></blockquote><p>
1342
1343 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1344 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1345
1346 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1347 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1348 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1349 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1350 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1351 Jessie is released.</p>
1352
1353 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1354 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1355 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1356 line.</p>
1357
1358       </div>
1359       <div class="tags">
1360
1361
1362         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>.
1363
1364
1365       </div>
1366     </div>
1367     <div class="padding"></div>
1368
1369     <div class="entry">
1370       <div class="title">
1371         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
1372       </div>
1373       <div class="date">
1374         10th November 2014
1375       </div>
1376       <div class="body">
1377         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1378 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1379 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1380
1381 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1382 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1383 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1384 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1385 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1386 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1387 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1388 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1389 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1390 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1391 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1392 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1393 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1394 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1395 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1396
1397 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1398 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1399 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1400 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1401 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1402 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1403 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1404 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1405 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1406 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1407 were fairly easy, and
1408 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1409 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1410 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1411 useful approach.</p>
1412
1413 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1414 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1415 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1416 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1417 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
1418 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
1419 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1420 this:</p>
1421
1422 <p><blockquote><pre>
1423 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1424   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1425 </pre></blockquote></p>
1426
1427 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
1428 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
1429
1430 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1431 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
1432 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1433 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1434 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
1435 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1436 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
1437 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
1438 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1439 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1440 system.</p>
1441
1442 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1443 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1444 SMTorP. :)</p>
1445
1446       </div>
1447       <div class="tags">
1448
1449
1450         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1451
1452
1453       </div>
1454     </div>
1455     <div class="padding"></div>
1456
1457     <div class="entry">
1458       <div class="title">
1459         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
1460       </div>
1461       <div class="date">
1462         27th October 2014
1463       </div>
1464       <div class="body">
1465         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
1466 sent out
1467 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
1468 announcement</a>:</p>
1469
1470 <pre>
1471 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
1472 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
1473
1474 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
1475 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
1476 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
1477 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
1478 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
1479 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
1480 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
1481
1482 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1483 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1484 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
1485 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
1486 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
1487 of at least 5 characters!
1488
1489  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
1490
1491 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
1492 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
1493 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
1494 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
1495 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
1496
1497 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
1498 mostly in Germany and Norway.
1499
1500 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
1501 ===============================
1502
1503 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
1504 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1505 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
1506 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1507 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1508 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1509 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1510 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
1511 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1512 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1513 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1514 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
1515 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1516 environment.
1517
1518  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
1519  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
1520
1521 Full release notes and manual
1522 =============================
1523
1524 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
1525 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
1526 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
1527 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
1528 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
1529
1530  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
1531  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
1532
1533 Where to get it
1534 ---------------
1535
1536 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
1537
1538  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
1539  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
1540  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
1541
1542 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
1543
1544 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
1545 ===============================================================================
1546
1547
1548 Installation changes
1549 --------------------
1550
1551  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
1552
1553 Software updates
1554 ----------------
1555
1556 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
1557
1558  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
1559  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
1560    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
1561    choose one of the others see manual.)
1562  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
1563  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
1564  * GOsa 2.7.4
1565  * LTSP 5.5.4
1566  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1567  * new boot framework: systemd
1568  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
1569  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1570  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1571  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
1572  * golearn 0.9
1573  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1574  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1575  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
1576    installation.
1577  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
1578    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
1579
1580  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
1581  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
1582
1583 Fixed bugs
1584 ----------
1585
1586  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1587    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1588    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
1589  * and many others.
1590
1591 Documentation and translation updates
1592 -------------------------------------
1593
1594  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
1595    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
1596    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
1597
1598 Other changes
1599 -------------
1600
1601  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
1602    server takes more time.
1603  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
1604    doesn't work.
1605
1606 Regressions / known problems
1607 ----------------------------
1608
1609  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
1610    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
1611    and Debian bug #762103).
1612  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
1613    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
1614  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
1615    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
1616    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
1617
1618 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
1619
1620  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
1621
1622 How to report bugs
1623 ------------------
1624
1625 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
1626
1627 About Debian
1628 ============
1629
1630 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1631 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1632 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1633 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1634 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1635 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1636 operating system.
1637
1638 Contact Information
1639 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
1640 mail to press@debian.org.
1641
1642  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
1643 </pre>
1644
1645       </div>
1646       <div class="tags">
1647
1648
1649         Tags: <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>.
1650
1651
1652       </div>
1653     </div>
1654     <div class="padding"></div>
1655
1656     <div class="entry">
1657       <div class="title">
1658         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
1659       </div>
1660       <div class="date">
1661         23rd October 2014
1662       </div>
1663       <div class="body">
1664         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
1665 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
1666 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
1667 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
1668 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
1669 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
1670 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
1671 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
1672 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
1673 live.</p>
1674
1675 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
1676 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
1677 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
1678 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
1679 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
1680 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
1681 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
1682 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
1683
1684       </div>
1685       <div class="tags">
1686
1687
1688         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
1689
1690
1691       </div>
1692     </div>
1693     <div class="padding"></div>
1694
1695     <div class="entry">
1696       <div class="title">
1697         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
1698       </div>
1699       <div class="date">
1700         22nd October 2014
1701       </div>
1702       <div class="body">
1703         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1704 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1705 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1706 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1707 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
1708 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1709 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
1710 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1711 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
1712 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
1713 lists I recently took over:</p>
1714
1715 <p><blockquote><pre>
1716 % time listadmin xiph
1717 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1718 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1719
1720 real    0m1.709s
1721 user    0m0.232s
1722 sys     0m0.012s
1723 %
1724 </pre></blockquote></p>
1725
1726 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1727 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
1728 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1729 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1730 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
1731 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1732 program.</p>
1733
1734 <p>If you install
1735 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1736 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
1737 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
1738
1739 <p><blockquote><pre>
1740 username username@example.org
1741 spamlevel 23
1742 default discard
1743 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1744
1745 password secret
1746 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1747 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1748
1749 password hidden
1750 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1751 </pre></blockquote></p>
1752
1753 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
1754 learn the details.</p>
1755
1756 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1757 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1758 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1759 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
1760
1761 <p><blockquote><pre>
1762 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
1763 </pre></blockquote></p>
1764
1765 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1766 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1767 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
1768 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
1769 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1770 email.</p>
1771
1772 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
1773 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1774 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1775 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
1776 software.</p>
1777
1778 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1779 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1780 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1781
1782 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1783 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
1784 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
1785 sure why.</p>
1786
1787       </div>
1788       <div class="tags">
1789
1790
1791         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>.
1792
1793
1794       </div>
1795     </div>
1796     <div class="padding"></div>
1797
1798     <div class="entry">
1799       <div class="title">
1800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
1801       </div>
1802       <div class="date">
1803         17th October 2014
1804       </div>
1805       <div class="body">
1806         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1807 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1808 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1809 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1810 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1811 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1812 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1813
1814 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1815 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1816 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1817 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1818 of this story.)</p>
1819
1820 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1821 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1822 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1823 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1824 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1825 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1826 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1827 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1828 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1829 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1830
1831 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1832 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1833 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1834 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1835
1836 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1837 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1838
1839 <p><blockquote><pre>
1840 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1841 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1842 </pre></blockquote></p>
1843
1844 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1845 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1846 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1847 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1848 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1849 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1850 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1851 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1852
1853 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1854 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1855
1856 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1857 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1858 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1859 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1860 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1861
1862 <p><blockquote><pre>
1863 Task: isenkram-packages
1864 Section: hardware
1865 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1866  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1867  proposed.
1868 Test-new-install: show show
1869 Relevance: 8
1870 Packages: for-current-hardware
1871
1872 Task: isenkram-firmware
1873 Section: hardware
1874 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1875  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1876  packages are proposed.
1877 Test-new-install: mark show
1878 Relevance: 8
1879 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1880 </pre></blockquote></p>
1881
1882 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1883 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1884 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1885 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1886 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1887
1888 <p><blockquote><pre>
1889 #!/bin/sh
1890 #
1891 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1892 export PATH
1893 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1894 </pre></blockquote></p>
1895
1896 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1897 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1898
1899 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1900 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1901 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1902 install.</p>
1903
1904 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1905 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1906 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1907
1908       </div>
1909       <div class="tags">
1910
1911
1912         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1913
1914
1915       </div>
1916     </div>
1917     <div class="padding"></div>
1918
1919     <div class="entry">
1920       <div class="title">
1921         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
1922       </div>
1923       <div class="date">
1924          4th October 2014
1925       </div>
1926       <div class="body">
1927         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1928 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1929 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1930 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1931
1932 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1933
1934 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1935 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1936 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1937
1938       </div>
1939       <div class="tags">
1940
1941
1942         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>.
1943
1944
1945       </div>
1946     </div>
1947     <div class="padding"></div>
1948
1949     <div class="entry">
1950       <div class="title">
1951         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
1952       </div>
1953       <div class="date">
1954          4th October 2014
1955       </div>
1956       <div class="body">
1957         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1958 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1959 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1960 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1961 Dibb.</p>
1962
1963 <p>I just wrapped up
1964 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1965 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1966 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1967 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1968 0.17.</p>
1969
1970 <ul>
1971
1972  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1973  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1974    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1975  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1976  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1977  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1978  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1979  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1980  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1981    the palette size is the same.</li>
1982  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1983  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1984  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1985  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1986    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1987
1988 </ul>
1989
1990 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1991 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1992 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1993
1994       </div>
1995       <div class="tags">
1996
1997
1998         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1999
2000
2001       </div>
2002     </div>
2003     <div class="padding"></div>
2004
2005     <div class="entry">
2006       <div class="title">
2007         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
2008       </div>
2009       <div class="date">
2010         26th September 2014
2011       </div>
2012       <div class="body">
2013         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2014 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
2015 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
2016 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
2017 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
2018 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
2019 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
2020 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
2021 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
2022 future.  The
2023 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
2024 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
2025 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
2026 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
2027 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
2028
2029 <p>First, download the test ISO via
2030 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
2031 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
2032 or rsync (use
2033 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
2034 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
2035 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
2036 install with some tweaking.</p>
2037
2038 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
2039 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
2040
2041 <p><blockquote><pre>
2042 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
2043 </pre></blockquote></p>
2044
2045 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
2046 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
2047 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
2048 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
2049
2050 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
2051 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
2052 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
2053 your need.</p>
2054
2055 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
2056 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
2057 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
2058 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
2059 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
2060 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
2061 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
2062 days.</p>
2063
2064 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
2065 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
2066 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
2067 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
2068 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
2069 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
2070 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
2071 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
2072 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
2073
2074 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
2075 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
2076 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
2077
2078       </div>
2079       <div class="tags">
2080
2081
2082         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>.
2083
2084
2085       </div>
2086     </div>
2087     <div class="padding"></div>
2088
2089     <div class="entry">
2090       <div class="title">
2091         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
2092       </div>
2093       <div class="date">
2094         25th September 2014
2095       </div>
2096       <div class="body">
2097         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
2098 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
2099 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
2100 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
2101 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
2102 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
2103 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
2104 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
2105 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
2106 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
2107 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
2108 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
2109 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
2110
2111 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
2112 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
2113 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
2114 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
2115 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
2116 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
2117 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
2118 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
2119 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
2120 list</a>. :)</p>
2121
2122       </div>
2123       <div class="tags">
2124
2125
2126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2127
2128
2129       </div>
2130     </div>
2131     <div class="padding"></div>
2132
2133     <div class="entry">
2134       <div class="title">
2135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
2136       </div>
2137       <div class="date">
2138         16th September 2014
2139       </div>
2140       <div class="body">
2141         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
2142 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
2143 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
2144 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
2145 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
2146 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
2147 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
2148 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
2149 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
2150 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
2151 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
2152 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
2153 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
2154 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
2155
2156 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
2157 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
2158 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
2159 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
2160 depend on the small and clever package
2161 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
2162 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
2163 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
2164 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
2165 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
2166 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
2167 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
2168 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
2169 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
2170 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
2171 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
2172
2173 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
2174 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
2175 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
2176 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
2177 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
2178 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
2179 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
2180 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
2181 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
2182 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
2183 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
2184 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
2185 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
2186 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
2187 dialog.</p>
2188
2189 <p><table>
2190
2191 <tr>
2192 <th>Machine/setup</th>
2193 <th>Original tasksel</th>
2194 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
2195 <th>Reduction</th>
2196 </tr>
2197
2198 <tr>
2199 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
2200 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
2201 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
2202 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
2203 </tr>
2204
2205 <tr>
2206 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
2207 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
2208 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
2209 <td>23 min 40%</td>
2210 </tr>
2211
2212 <tr>
2213 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
2214 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
2215 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
2216 <td>11 min 50%</td>
2217 </tr>
2218
2219 <tr>
2220 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
2221 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
2222 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
2223 <td>2 min 33%</td>
2224 </tr>
2225
2226 <tr>
2227 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
2228 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
2229 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
2230 <td>4 min 21%</td>
2231 </tr>
2232
2233 </table></p>
2234
2235 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
2236 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
2237 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
2238 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
2239 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
2240 installed.</p>
2241
2242 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
2243 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
2244 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
2245 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
2246 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
2247 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
2248 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
2249 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
2250 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
2251 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
2252 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
2253 for the entire installation.</p>
2254
2255 <p>I've implemented this in the
2256 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
2257 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
2258 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
2259 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
2260 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
2261
2262 <p><blockquote><pre>
2263 #!/bin/sh
2264 set -e
2265 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2266 info() {
2267     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
2268 }
2269 error() {
2270     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
2271 }
2272 override_install() {
2273     apt-install eatmydata || true
2274     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
2275         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2276             file=/usr/bin/$bin
2277             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
2278             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
2279                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
2280                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
2281                     > /target$file.edu
2282                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
2283                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2284                     --rename --quiet --add $file
2285                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
2286             else
2287                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
2288             fi
2289         done
2290     else
2291         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
2292     fi
2293 }
2294
2295 override_install
2296 </pre></blockquote></p>
2297
2298 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
2299 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
2300
2301 <p><blockquote><pre>
2302 #! /bin/sh -e
2303 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2304 error() {
2305     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
2306 }
2307 remove_install_override() {
2308     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2309         file=/usr/bin/$bin
2310         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
2311             rm /target$file
2312             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2313                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
2314             rm /target$file.edu
2315         else
2316             error "Missing divert for $file."
2317         fi
2318     done
2319     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
2320 }
2321
2322 remove_install_override
2323 </pre></blockquote></p>
2324
2325 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
2326 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
2327 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
2328
2329 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
2330 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
2331 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
2332 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
2333 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
2334 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
2335 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
2336 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
2337 everyone.</p>
2338
2339 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
2340 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
2341 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
2342 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
2343
2344 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
2345 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
2346 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
2347 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
2348 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
2349
2350 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
2351 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
2352 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
2353 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
2354 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
2355
2356       </div>
2357       <div class="tags">
2358
2359
2360         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>.
2361
2362
2363       </div>
2364     </div>
2365     <div class="padding"></div>
2366
2367     <div class="entry">
2368       <div class="title">
2369         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
2370       </div>
2371       <div class="date">
2372         10th September 2014
2373       </div>
2374       <div class="body">
2375         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
2376 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
2377 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
2378 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
2379 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
2380 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
2381 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
2382 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
2383 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
2384 those problems are gone now.</p>
2385
2386 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
2387 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
2388 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
2389 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
2390 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
2391
2392 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
2393 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
2394 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
2395
2396 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
2397 line:</p>
2398
2399 <p><blockquote><pre>
2400 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
2401 </pre></blockquote></p>
2402
2403 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
2404 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
2405 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
2406 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
2407
2408 <p><blockquote><pre>
2409 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
2410 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
2411 %
2412 </pre></blockquote></p>
2413
2414 <p>Now if only
2415 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
2416 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
2417 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
2418 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
2419 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
2420 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
2421 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
2422 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
2423 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
2424
2425       </div>
2426       <div class="tags">
2427
2428
2429         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2430
2431
2432       </div>
2433     </div>
2434     <div class="padding"></div>
2435
2436     <div class="entry">
2437       <div class="title">
2438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
2439       </div>
2440       <div class="date">
2441         25th August 2014
2442       </div>
2443       <div class="body">
2444         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
2445 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
2446 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
2447 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
2448 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
2449 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
2450 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
2451 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
2452 am not sure.
2453 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
2454 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
2455 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
2456 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
2457 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
2458 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
2459 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
2460 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
2461 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
2462 licenses are.</p>
2463
2464 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
2465 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
2466 end user</a>
2467 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
2468 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
2469
2470 <p><blockquote>
2471 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
2472 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
2473
2474 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
2475 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
2476 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
2477 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
2478 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
2479 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
2480 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
2481 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
2482 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
2483 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
2484 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
2485 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
2486 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
2487 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
2488 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
2489 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
2490 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
2491 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
2492
2493 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
2494 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
2495
2496 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
2497 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
2498 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
2499 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
2500 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
2501 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
2502 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
2503 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
2504 </blockquote></p>
2505
2506 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
2507 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
2508
2509 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
2510 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
2511
2512 <p><blockquote>
2513
2514 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
2515 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
2516 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
2517 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
2518 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
2519 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
2520 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
2521 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
2522 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
2523 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
2524 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
2525 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
2526
2527 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
2528 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
2529 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
2530 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
2531 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
2532 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
2533 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
2534 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
2535 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
2536 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
2537 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
2538 additional details.</p>
2539
2540 </blockquote></p>
2541
2542 <p>Some free software like
2543 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
2544 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
2545 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
2546 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
2547
2548       </div>
2549       <div class="tags">
2550
2551
2552         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2553
2554
2555       </div>
2556     </div>
2557     <div class="padding"></div>
2558
2559     <div class="entry">
2560       <div class="title">
2561         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
2562       </div>
2563       <div class="date">
2564         31st July 2014
2565       </div>
2566       <div class="body">
2567         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
2568 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2569 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
2570 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
2571 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
2572 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
2573
2574 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2575
2576 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
2577 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
2578 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
2579 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
2580 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
2581 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
2582 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
2583 works with Windows . :-(</p>
2584
2585 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
2586 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
2587 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
2588 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
2589 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
2590 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
2591
2592 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2593 project?</strong></p>
2594
2595 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
2596 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
2597 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
2598 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
2599 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
2600 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
2601 with this job.</p>
2602
2603 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2604 Edu?</strong></p>
2605
2606 <p>The independence.</p>
2607
2608 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
2609 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
2610 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
2611
2612 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
2613 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
2614 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
2615 working reliable. </p>
2616
2617 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
2618 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
2619 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
2620 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
2621 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
2622 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
2623 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
2624 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
2625
2626 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2627 Edu?</strong></p>
2628
2629 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
2630 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
2631 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
2632
2633 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2634
2635 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
2636 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
2637
2638 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2639 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2640
2641 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
2642 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
2643 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
2644 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
2645 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
2646 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
2647 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
2648
2649       </div>
2650       <div class="tags">
2651
2652
2653         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
2654
2655
2656       </div>
2657     </div>
2658     <div class="padding"></div>
2659
2660     <div class="entry">
2661       <div class="title">
2662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
2663       </div>
2664       <div class="date">
2665         23rd July 2014
2666       </div>
2667       <div class="body">
2668         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
2669 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2670 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2671 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
2672 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
2673 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
2674 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
2675 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
2676 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
2677 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
2678 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
2679 the translation show this very well:</p>
2680
2681 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
2682
2683 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
2684 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
2685 project pages and the
2686 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
2687 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2688 and HTML version available in the
2689 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
2690 directory</a>.</p>
2691
2692 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
2693 you find any.</p>
2694
2695       </div>
2696       <div class="tags">
2697
2698
2699         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2700
2701
2702       </div>
2703     </div>
2704     <div class="padding"></div>
2705
2706     <div class="entry">
2707       <div class="title">
2708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
2709       </div>
2710       <div class="date">
2711         17th June 2014
2712       </div>
2713       <div class="body">
2714         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2715 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
2716 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
2717 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
2718 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
2719
2720 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
2721 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
2722 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
2723 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
2724 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
2725 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
2726 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
2727 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
2728 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
2729 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
2730 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
2731 goals.</p>
2732
2733 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
2734 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
2735 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
2736 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
2737 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
2738 chapters together into one large web page (aka
2739 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
2740 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
2741 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
2742 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
2743 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
2744 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
2745 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
2746 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
2747 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
2748 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
2749 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
2750 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
2751 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
2752 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
2753 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
2754 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
2755 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
2756 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
2757
2758 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
2759 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
2760 track the English original.  For this we use the
2761 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
2762 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
2763 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
2764 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
2765 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
2766 files), which the translations update with the native language
2767 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
2768 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
2769 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
2770 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
2771 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
2772 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
2773 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
2774 of the documentation.</p>
2775
2776 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
2777 recommend using
2778 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
2779 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
2780 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
2781 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
2782 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
2783 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
2784 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
2785 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
2786
2787 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
2788 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
2789 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
2790 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
2791 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2792 translated images by storing translated versions in
2793 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
2794 package maintainers know more.</p>
2795
2796 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2797 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2798 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
2799 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2800 PDF version</a> or the
2801 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2802 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2803 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
2804
2805 <p>To learn more, check out
2806 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2807 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
2808 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2809 manual on the wiki</a> and
2810 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2811 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
2812
2813       </div>
2814       <div class="tags">
2815
2816
2817         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2818
2819
2820       </div>
2821     </div>
2822     <div class="padding"></div>
2823
2824     <div class="entry">
2825       <div class="title">
2826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
2827       </div>
2828       <div class="date">
2829         29th May 2014
2830       </div>
2831       <div class="body">
2832         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
2833 in my car, connected to
2834 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
2835 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
2836 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
2837 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
2838 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
2839 such car computer.</p>
2840
2841 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
2842
2843 <ul>
2844
2845  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
2846
2847  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
2848    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
2849    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
2850    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
2851    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
2852
2853  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
2854    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
2855    route.</li>
2856
2857  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
2858
2859  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
2860    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
2861    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
2862    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
2863    connection do not work.</li>
2864
2865  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
2866    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
2867
2868  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
2869    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
2870
2871  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
2872    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
2873
2874 </ul>
2875
2876 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
2877 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
2878
2879       </div>
2880       <div class="tags">
2881
2882
2883         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2884
2885
2886       </div>
2887     </div>
2888     <div class="padding"></div>
2889
2890     <div class="entry">
2891       <div class="title">
2892         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
2893       </div>
2894       <div class="date">
2895         29th April 2014
2896       </div>
2897       <div class="body">
2898         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
2899 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
2900 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
2901 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
2902 newer AVM2 format - see
2903 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
2904 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
2905 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
2906 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
2907 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
2908 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
2909 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
2910 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
2911 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
2912 sites do not work yet.</p>
2913
2914 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
2915 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
2916 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
2917 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
2918 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
2919 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
2920 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
2921 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
2922 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
2923 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
2924 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
2925
2926 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
2927 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
2928 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
2929 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
2930 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
2931 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
2932 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
2933
2934 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
2935 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
2936 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
2937 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
2938 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
2939
2940       </div>
2941       <div class="tags">
2942
2943
2944         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2945
2946
2947       </div>
2948     </div>
2949     <div class="padding"></div>
2950
2951     <div class="entry">
2952       <div class="title">
2953         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
2954       </div>
2955       <div class="date">
2956         23rd April 2014
2957       </div>
2958       <div class="body">
2959         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2960 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2961 So I implemented one, using
2962 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2963 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2964 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2965 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2966 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2967 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2968
2969 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2970 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2971 packages to install.  The first part is in
2972 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2973 this:</p>
2974
2975 <p><blockquote><pre>
2976 Task: isenkram
2977 Section: hardware
2978 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2979  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2980  proposed.
2981 Test-new-install: mark show
2982 Relevance: 8
2983 Packages: for-current-hardware
2984 </pre></blockquote></p>
2985
2986 <p>The second part is in
2987 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2988 this:</p>
2989
2990 <p><blockquote><pre>
2991 #!/bin/sh
2992 #
2993 (
2994     isenkram-lookup
2995     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2996 ) | sort -u
2997 </pre></blockquote></p>
2998
2999 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
3000 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
3001 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
3002 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
3003 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
3004 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
3005
3006 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
3007 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
3008 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
3009 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
3010 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
3011 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
3012 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
3013 the python-apt code (bug
3014 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
3015 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
3016 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
3017 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
3018 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
3019 unstable today.</p>
3020
3021 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
3022 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
3023 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
3024 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
3025 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
3026 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
3027 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
3028 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
3029 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
3030
3031 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
3032 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
3033 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
3034 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
3035 package.  See also
3036 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
3037 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
3038 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
3039 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
3040
3041       </div>
3042       <div class="tags">
3043
3044
3045         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3046
3047
3048       </div>
3049     </div>
3050     <div class="padding"></div>
3051
3052     <div class="entry">
3053       <div class="title">
3054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
3055       </div>
3056       <div class="date">
3057         15th April 2014
3058       </div>
3059       <div class="body">
3060         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3061 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
3062 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
3063 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
3064 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
3065 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
3066
3067 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
3068 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
3069 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
3070 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
3071 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
3072 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
3073 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
3074
3075 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
3076 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
3077 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
3078 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
3079 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
3080 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
3081 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
3082 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
3083 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
3084 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
3085 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
3086 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
3087
3088 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
3089 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
3090 become root:</p>
3091
3092 <p><pre>
3093 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3094   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3095   u-boot-tools
3096 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3097   freedom-maker
3098 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3099 </pre></p>
3100
3101 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3102 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
3103 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
3104 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
3105 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
3106 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
3107 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
3108 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
3109
3110 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3111 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3112 the preseed values:</p>
3113
3114 <p><pre>
3115 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3116 </pre></p>
3117
3118 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
3119 it still work.</p>
3120
3121 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
3122 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
3123 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
3124 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
3125 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
3126 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
3127 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
3128
3129 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3130 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3131 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3132 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3133 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3134 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3135
3136       </div>
3137       <div class="tags">
3138
3139
3140         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3141
3142
3143       </div>
3144     </div>
3145     <div class="padding"></div>
3146
3147     <div class="entry">
3148       <div class="title">
3149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
3150       </div>
3151       <div class="date">
3152          9th April 2014
3153       </div>
3154       <div class="body">
3155         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
3156 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
3157 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
3158 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
3159 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
3160 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
3161 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
3162 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
3163 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
3164 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
3165 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
3166 have looked at a system called
3167 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
3168 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
3169
3170 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
3171 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
3172 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
3173 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
3174 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
3175 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
3176 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
3177 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
3178 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
3179 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
3180 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
3181 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
3182 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
3183
3184 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
3185 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
3186 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
3187 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
3188 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
3189 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
3190 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
3191 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
3192 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
3193 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
3194 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
3195 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
3196 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
3197 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
3198 account.</p>
3199
3200 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
3201 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
3202 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
3203 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
3204 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
3205 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
3206 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
3207
3208 <p><blockquote><pre>
3209 [s3c]
3210 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3211 backend-login: API-login
3212 backend-password: API-password
3213 fs-passphrase: local-password
3214 </pre></blockquote></p>
3215
3216 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
3217 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
3218 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
3219 details and password to create it:</p>
3220
3221 <p><blockquote><pre>
3222 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
3223 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3224   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3225 Enter backend login:
3226 Enter backend password:
3227 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
3228 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
3229 Enter encryption password:
3230 Confirm encryption password:
3231 Generating random encryption key...
3232 Creating metadata tables...
3233 Dumping metadata...
3234 ..objects..
3235 ..blocks..
3236 ..inodes..
3237 ..inode_blocks..
3238 ..symlink_targets..
3239 ..names..
3240 ..contents..
3241 ..ext_attributes..
3242 Compressing and uploading metadata...
3243 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
3244 # </pre></blockquote></p>
3245
3246 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
3247
3248 <p><blockquote><pre>
3249 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3250   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
3251 Using 4 upload threads.
3252 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
3253 Reading metadata...
3254 ..objects..
3255 ..blocks..
3256 ..inodes..
3257 ..inode_blocks..
3258 ..symlink_targets..
3259 ..names..
3260 ..contents..
3261 ..ext_attributes..
3262 Mounting filesystem...
3263 # df -h /s3ql
3264 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
3265 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
3266 #
3267 </pre></blockquote></p>
3268
3269 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
3270 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
3271 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
3272 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
3273 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
3274 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
3275
3276 <p><blockquote><pre>
3277 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
3278 #
3279 </pre></blockquote></p>
3280
3281 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
3282 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
3283 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
3284 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
3285 file system:</p>
3286
3287 <p><blockquote><pre>
3288 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3289 Using cached metadata.
3290 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
3291 Checking DB integrity...
3292 Creating temporary extra indices...
3293 Checking lost+found...
3294 Checking cached objects...
3295 Checking names (refcounts)...
3296 Checking contents (names)...
3297 Checking contents (inodes)...
3298 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
3299 Checking objects (reference counts)...
3300 Checking objects (backend)...
3301 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
3302 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
3303 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
3304 Checking objects (sizes)...
3305 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
3306 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
3307 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
3308 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
3309 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
3310 Checking inodes (sizes)...
3311 Checking extended attributes (names)...
3312 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
3313 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
3314 Checking directory reachability...
3315 Checking unix conventions...
3316 Checking referential integrity...
3317 Dropping temporary indices...
3318 Backing up old metadata...
3319 Dumping metadata...
3320 ..objects..
3321 ..blocks..
3322 ..inodes..
3323 ..inode_blocks..
3324 ..symlink_targets..
3325 ..names..
3326 ..contents..
3327 ..ext_attributes..
3328 Compressing and uploading metadata...
3329 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
3330 #
3331 </pre></blockquote></p>
3332
3333 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
3334 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
3335 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
3336 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
3337 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
3338 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
3339 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
3340 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
3341 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
3342 working set.</p>
3343
3344 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
3345 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
3346 busy:</p>
3347
3348 <p><blockquote><pre>
3349 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3350   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
3351 Using 8 upload threads.
3352 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
3353 #
3354 </pre></blockquote></p>
3355
3356 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
3357 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
3358 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
3359 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
3360 s3qlctrl:
3361
3362 <p><blockquote><pre>
3363 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
3364 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
3365 #
3366 </pre></blockquote></p>
3367
3368 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
3369 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
3370 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
3371 a report:</p>
3372
3373 <p><blockquote><pre>
3374 # s3qlstat /s3ql
3375 Directory entries:    9141
3376 Inodes:               9143
3377 Data blocks:          8851
3378 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
3379 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
3380 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
3381 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
3382 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
3383 #
3384 </pre></blockquote></p>
3385
3386 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
3387 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
3388 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
3389 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
3390 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
3391 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
3392 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
3393 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
3394 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
3395 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
3396 best.</p>
3397
3398 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
3399 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
3400 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
3401 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
3402 poster is titled
3403 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
3404 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
3405 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
3406 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
3407 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
3408
3409 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
3410 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
3411 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
3412 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
3413 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
3414 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
3415 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
3416 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
3417
3418 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
3419 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
3420 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
3421 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
3422 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
3423 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
3424 only read from it.</p>
3425
3426 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3427 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3428 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3429
3430       </div>
3431       <div class="tags">
3432
3433
3434         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3435
3436
3437       </div>
3438     </div>
3439     <div class="padding"></div>
3440
3441     <div class="entry">
3442       <div class="title">
3443         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
3444       </div>
3445       <div class="date">
3446          1st April 2014
3447       </div>
3448       <div class="body">
3449         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
3450 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
3451 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
3452 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
3453 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
3454 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
3455 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
3456 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
3457 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
3458 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
3459 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
3460 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
3461 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
3462
3463 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
3464 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
3465 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
3466 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
3467 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
3468 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
3469 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
3470 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
3471 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
3472 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
3473 Linux.</p>
3474
3475 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
3476 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
3477 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
3478 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
3479 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
3480 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
3481 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
3482 Windows before metro).</p>
3483
3484 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
3485 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
3486 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
3487 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
3488 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
3489 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
3490 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
3491 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
3492 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
3493 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
3494 old Windows binaries, check it out by
3495 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
3496 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
3497 image.</p>
3498
3499       </div>
3500       <div class="tags">
3501
3502
3503         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
3504
3505
3506       </div>
3507     </div>
3508     <div class="padding"></div>
3509
3510     <div class="entry">
3511       <div class="title">
3512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
3513       </div>
3514       <div class="date">
3515         30th March 2014
3516       </div>
3517       <div class="body">
3518         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3519 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
3520 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
3521 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
3522 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
3523
3524 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3525
3526 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
3527 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
3528 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
3529 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
3530 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
3531
3532 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
3533 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
3534 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
3535
3536 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
3537 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
3538 hunger.</p>
3539
3540 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3541 project?</strong></p>
3542
3543 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
3544 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
3545 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
3546 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
3547 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
3548 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
3549 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
3550 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
3551 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
3552 running.  I just loved it.</p>
3553
3554 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3555 Edu?</strong></p>
3556
3557 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
3558 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
3559 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
3560 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
3561 be made of steel.</p>
3562
3563 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3564 Edu?</strong></p>
3565
3566 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
3567
3568 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
3569 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
3570 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
3571 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
3572 or dropped.</p>
3573
3574 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
3575 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
3576 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
3577 discourage many people too.</p>
3578
3579 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3580
3581 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
3582 Virtualbox.</p>
3583
3584
3585 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3586 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3587
3588 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
3589 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
3590 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
3591 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
3592 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
3593 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
3594 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
3595 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
3596 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
3597
3598       </div>
3599       <div class="tags">
3600
3601
3602         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
3603
3604
3605       </div>
3606     </div>
3607     <div class="padding"></div>
3608
3609     <div class="entry">
3610       <div class="title">
3611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
3612       </div>
3613       <div class="date">
3614         25th March 2014
3615       </div>
3616       <div class="body">
3617         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
3618 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
3619 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
3620 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
3621 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
3622 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
3623 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
3624 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
3625 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
3626
3627 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
3628 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
3629 looked a given way.  Such
3630 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
3631 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
3632 called a
3633 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
3634 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
3635 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
3636 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
3637 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
3638 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
3639 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
3640 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
3641 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
3642 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
3643 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
3644 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
3645 There are several commercial services around providing such
3646 timestamping.  A quick search for
3647 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
3648 service</a>" pointed me to at least
3649 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
3650 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
3651 Vadis</a>,
3652 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
3653 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
3654 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
3655 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
3656
3657 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
3658 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
3659 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
3660 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
3661 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
3662 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
3663 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
3664 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
3665 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
3666 Greifswald.</p>
3667
3668 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
3669 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
3670 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
3671 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
3672 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
3673
3674 <p><blockquote><pre>
3675 #!/bin/sh
3676 set -e
3677 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
3678 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
3679 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
3680 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
3681 cafile=chain.txt
3682 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
3683     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
3684 fi
3685 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
3686     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
3687 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
3688 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
3689 base64 < "$resfile"
3690 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
3691 </pre></blockquote></p>
3692
3693 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
3694 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
3695 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
3696 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
3697 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
3698 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
3699 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
3700 changed.</p>
3701
3702 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
3703 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
3704 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
3705 to set up?</p>
3706
3707       </div>
3708       <div class="tags">
3709
3710
3711         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3712
3713
3714       </div>
3715     </div>
3716     <div class="padding"></div>
3717
3718     <div class="entry">
3719       <div class="title">
3720         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
3721       </div>
3722       <div class="date">
3723         21st March 2014
3724       </div>
3725       <div class="body">
3726         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
3727 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
3728 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
3729 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
3730 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
3731 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
3732 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
3733
3734 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
3735 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
3736 tried using
3737 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
3738 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
3739 and program
3740 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
3741 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
3742 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
3743 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
3744 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
3745 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
3746 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
3747 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
3748 this method.</p>
3749
3750 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
3751 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
3752 problem is
3753 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
3754 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
3755 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
3756 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
3757 DVD structures, as the python library
3758 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
3759 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
3760 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
3761 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
3762 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
3763 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
3764
3765 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
3766 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
3767
3768       </div>
3769       <div class="tags">
3770
3771
3772         Tags: <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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3773
3774
3775       </div>
3776     </div>
3777     <div class="padding"></div>
3778
3779     <div class="entry">
3780       <div class="title">
3781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
3782       </div>
3783       <div class="date">
3784         14th March 2014
3785       </div>
3786       <div class="body">
3787         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3788 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
3789 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
3790 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
3791 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
3792 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
3793 release (0.2).</p>
3794
3795 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
3796 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
3797 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
3798 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
3799 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
3800 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
3801 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
3802 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
3803 and build using
3804 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
3805 with a user with sudo access to become root:
3806
3807 <pre>
3808 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3809   freedom-maker
3810 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3811   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3812   u-boot-tools
3813 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3814 </pre>
3815
3816 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3817 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
3818 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
3819 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
3820 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
3821 kpartx call.</p>
3822
3823 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3824 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3825 the preseed values:</p>
3826
3827 <pre>
3828 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3829 </pre>
3830
3831 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
3832 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
3833 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
3834 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
3835 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
3836 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
3837
3838 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3839 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3840 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3841 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3842 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3843 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3844
3845       </div>
3846       <div class="tags">
3847
3848
3849         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3850
3851
3852       </div>
3853     </div>
3854     <div class="padding"></div>
3855
3856     <div class="entry">
3857       <div class="title">
3858         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3859       </div>
3860       <div class="date">
3861         12th March 2014
3862       </div>
3863       <div class="body">
3864         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
3865 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
3866 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
3867 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
3868 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
3869 document this better when one of the customers of
3870 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
3871 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
3872 get this working are the following:</p>
3873
3874 <p><ol>
3875
3876 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
3877 example host here.</li>
3878
3879 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
3880 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
3881
3882 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
3883 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
3884
3885 </ol></p>
3886
3887 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
3888 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
3889 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
3890 started).</p>
3891
3892 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
3893 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
3894
3895 <p><blockquote><pre>
3896 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
3897 Export list for nas-server:
3898 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
3899 root@tjener:~#
3900 </pre></blockquote></p>
3901
3902 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
3903 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
3904 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
3905 NFS access.</p>
3906
3907 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
3908 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
3909 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
3910
3911 <p><blockquote><pre>
3912 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3913 </pre></blockquote></p>
3914
3915 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
3916 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
3917 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
3918 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
3919
3920 <p><blockquote><pre>
3921 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3922 objectClass: automount
3923 cn: nas-server
3924 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3925
3926 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3927 objectClass: top
3928 objectClass: automountMap
3929 ou: auto.nas-server
3930
3931 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3932 objectClass: automount
3933 cn: /
3934 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
3935 </pre></blockquote></p>
3936
3937 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
3938 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
3939 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
3940
3941 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
3942 the storage server directly by just visiting the
3943 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
3944 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
3945
3946       </div>
3947       <div class="tags">
3948
3949
3950         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
3951
3952
3953       </div>
3954     </div>
3955     <div class="padding"></div>
3956
3957     <div class="entry">
3958       <div class="title">
3959         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
3960       </div>
3961       <div class="date">
3962         22nd February 2014
3963       </div>
3964       <div class="body">
3965         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
3966 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
3967 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
3968 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
3969 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
3970 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
3971 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
3972 proper home since then.</p>
3973
3974 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
3975 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
3976 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
3977 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
3978 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
3979
3980 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
3981 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
3982 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
3983 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
3984 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
3985 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
3986 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
3987 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
3988 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
3989
3990       </div>
3991       <div class="tags">
3992
3993
3994         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>.
3995
3996
3997       </div>
3998     </div>
3999     <div class="padding"></div>
4000
4001     <div class="entry">
4002       <div class="title">
4003         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4004       </div>
4005       <div class="date">
4006          3rd February 2014
4007       </div>
4008       <div class="body">
4009         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4010 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4011 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4012 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4013 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4014 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
4015 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
4016 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
4017 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
4018
4019 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
4020 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
4021 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
4022 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
4023 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
4024 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
4025
4026 <p><blockquote><pre>
4027 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
4028 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
4029 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
4030 dhclient /dev/eth0
4031 </pre></blockquote></p>
4032
4033 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
4034 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
4035 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
4036
4037 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
4038 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
4039 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
4040 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
4041 side.</p>
4042
4043 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
4044 stuff:</p>
4045
4046 <p><blockquote><pre>
4047 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4048 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
4049 EOF
4050 apt-get update
4051 apt-get dist-upgrade
4052 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
4053     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
4054 update-alternatives --config runsystem
4055 </pre></blockquote></p>
4056
4057 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
4058 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
4059 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
4060 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
4061 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
4062 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
4063 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
4064 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
4065 ssh instead.
4066
4067 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
4068 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
4069 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
4070 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
4071 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
4072 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
4073
4074 <p><blockquote><pre>
4075 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4076 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
4077 EOF
4078 </pre></blockquote></p>
4079
4080 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
4081 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
4082 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
4083 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
4084
4085 <p><blockquote><pre>
4086 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
4087 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
4088 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
4089 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
4090 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
4091 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
4092 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
4093 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
4094 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
4095 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
4096 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
4097 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
4098 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
4099 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
4100 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
4101 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
4102 #
4103 </pre></blockquote></p>
4104
4105 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
4106 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
4107 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
4108 command line stuff.<p>
4109
4110       </div>
4111       <div class="tags">
4112
4113
4114         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>.
4115
4116
4117       </div>
4118     </div>
4119     <div class="padding"></div>
4120
4121     <div class="entry">
4122       <div class="title">
4123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
4124       </div>
4125       <div class="date">
4126         29th January 2014
4127       </div>
4128       <div class="body">
4129         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
4130 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
4131 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
4132 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
4133 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
4134 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
4135 investigated in
4136 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
4137 from December 2013, in the article
4138 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
4139 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
4140 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
4141 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
4142 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
4143 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
4144 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
4145 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
4146
4147 <p><blockquote>
4148 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
4149 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
4150 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
4151 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
4152 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
4153 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
4154 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
4155 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
4156 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
4157 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
4158 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
4159 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
4160
4161 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
4162 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
4163 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
4164 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
4165 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
4166 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
4167 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
4168 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
4169 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
4170 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
4171 </blockquote><p>
4172
4173 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
4174 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
4175 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
4176 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
4177 summarized like this:</p>
4178
4179 <p><blockquote>
4180 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
4181 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
4182 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
4183 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
4184 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
4185 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
4186 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
4187 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
4188 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
4189 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
4190 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
4191 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
4192 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
4193 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
4194 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
4195 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
4196 </blockquote></p>
4197
4198 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
4199 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
4200 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
4201 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
4202
4203 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4204 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4205 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4206
4207       </div>
4208       <div class="tags">
4209
4210
4211         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
4212
4213
4214       </div>
4215     </div>
4216     <div class="padding"></div>
4217
4218     <div class="entry">
4219       <div class="title">
4220         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
4221       </div>
4222       <div class="date">
4223         14th January 2014
4224       </div>
4225       <div class="body">
4226         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
4227 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
4228 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
4229 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
4230 the source.  The company behind it provide
4231 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
4232 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
4233 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
4234 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
4235 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
4236 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
4237 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
4238 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
4239 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
4240 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
4241 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
4242 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
4243 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
4244 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
4245 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
4246 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
4247 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
4248 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
4249 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
4250
4251 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
4252
4253 <ul>
4254
4255   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
4256   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
4257   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
4258
4259 </ul>
4260
4261 <p>You can
4262 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4263 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4264 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4265 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4266 include a test suite check.</p>
4267
4268       </div>
4269       <div class="tags">
4270
4271
4272         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4273
4274
4275       </div>
4276     </div>
4277     <div class="padding"></div>
4278
4279     <div class="entry">
4280       <div class="title">
4281         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
4282       </div>
4283       <div class="date">
4284         25th December 2013
4285       </div>
4286       <div class="body">
4287         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4288 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
4289 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
4290 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
4291 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
4292 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
4293 George</a>.</p>
4294
4295 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
4296
4297 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4298
4299 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
4300 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
4301 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
4302 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
4303 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
4304 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
4305
4306 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
4307 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
4308 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
4309 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
4310 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
4311 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
4312 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
4313 to help building another school's informational education concept from
4314 scratch.</p>
4315
4316 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
4317 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
4318 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
4319
4320 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
4321 and cycling.</p>
4322
4323 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4324 project?</strong></p>
4325
4326 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
4327 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
4328 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
4329 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
4330 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
4331 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
4332
4333 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
4334 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
4335 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
4336 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
4337 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
4338 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
4339 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
4340 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
4341 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
4342
4343 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
4344 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
4345 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
4346 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
4347
4348 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4349 Edu?</strong></p>
4350
4351 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
4352 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
4353 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
4354 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
4355 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
4356 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
4357 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
4358 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
4359 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
4360 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
4361 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
4362 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
4363 that it rocks!</p>
4364
4365 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
4366 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
4367 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
4368 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
4369 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
4370 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
4371 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
4372
4373 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4374 Edu?</strong></p>
4375
4376 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
4377 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
4378 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
4379 can list a few points about that:</p>
4380
4381 <ul>
4382
4383  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
4384  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
4385  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
4386
4387 </ul>
4388
4389 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
4390
4391 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4392
4393 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
4394 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
4395 year.</p>
4396
4397 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
4398 run text tools. I use
4399 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
4400 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
4401 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
4402 based full-featured student management software with the two),
4403 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
4404 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
4405 coloured world called the WWW, I use
4406 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
4407 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
4408 e-mail.</p>
4409
4410 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
4411 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
4412 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
4413 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
4414 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
4415 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
4416 Facebook now ;).</p>
4417
4418 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4419 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4420
4421 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
4422 side is what I have experienced.</p>
4423
4424 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
4425 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
4426 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
4427 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
4428 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
4429 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
4430 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
4431 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
4432 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
4433 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
4434 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
4435 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
4436 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
4437 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
4438 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
4439 plain criminal.</p>
4440
4441 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
4442 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
4443 founded an association named
4444 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
4445 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
4446 area of free and open source software, for example the
4447 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
4448 Teckids and are the youth programme of
4449 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
4450 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
4451 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
4452 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
4453 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
4454 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
4455
4456 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
4457 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
4458 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
4459 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
4460 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
4461 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
4462 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
4463 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
4464 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
4465 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
4466 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
4467 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
4468
4469 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
4470 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
4471 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
4472 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
4473
4474 <!--
4475
4476 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
4477
4478 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
4479 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
4480
4481  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
4482    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
4483    of the decision makers above;
4484  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
4485    knowledge about free software
4486
4487 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
4488
4489 -->
4490
4491       </div>
4492       <div class="tags">
4493
4494
4495         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
4496
4497
4498       </div>
4499     </div>
4500     <div class="padding"></div>
4501
4502     <div class="entry">
4503       <div class="title">
4504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
4505       </div>
4506       <div class="date">
4507          6th December 2013
4508       </div>
4509       <div class="body">
4510         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
4511 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4512 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
4513 had a new school administrator show up on
4514 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
4515 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
4516 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
4517 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
4518 Germany a few years ago.</p>
4519
4520 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4521
4522 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
4523 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
4524 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
4525 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
4526
4527 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
4528 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
4529 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
4530 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
4531 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
4532 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
4533 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
4534 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
4535 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
4536
4537 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4538 project?</strong></p>
4539
4540 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
4541 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
4542 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
4543 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
4544
4545 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4546 Edu?</strong></p>
4547
4548 <ul>
4549   <li>Quick installation,</li>
4550   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
4551   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
4552   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
4553     single company,</li>
4554   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
4555     experience and problem solutions.</li>
4556 </ul>
4557
4558 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4559 Edu?</strong></p>
4560
4561 <ul>
4562   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
4563   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
4564   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
4565   working again reliably.
4566
4567   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
4568   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
4569   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
4570   as their base.
4571
4572   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
4573   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
4574   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
4575   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
4576   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
4577   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
4578
4579   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
4580   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
4581   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
4582   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
4583   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
4584   schemes.</li>
4585
4586   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
4587   compared to Debian.</li>
4588
4589 </ul>
4590
4591 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
4592 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
4593 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
4594 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
4595
4596 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4597
4598 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
4599 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
4600 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
4601 programming languages for teaching.</p>
4602
4603 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4604 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4605
4606 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
4607
4608 <ul>
4609
4610   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
4611     teaching and learning.</li>
4612
4613   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
4614     home, and at their working place without running into license or
4615     conversion problems.</li>
4616
4617   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
4618     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
4619     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
4620     science, not products.</li>
4621
4622   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
4623     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
4624
4625 </ul>
4626
4627       </div>
4628       <div class="tags">
4629
4630
4631         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
4632
4633
4634       </div>
4635     </div>
4636     <div class="padding"></div>
4637
4638     <div class="entry">
4639       <div class="title">
4640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
4641       </div>
4642       <div class="date">
4643         30th November 2013
4644       </div>
4645       <div class="body">
4646         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
4647 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
4648 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
4649 experiment with interesting network technology, the
4650 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
4651 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
4652 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
4653 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
4654 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
4655 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
4656 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
4657 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
4658 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
4659 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
4660 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
4661 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
4662 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
4663 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
4664 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
4665 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
4666
4667       </div>
4668       <div class="tags">
4669
4670
4671         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4672
4673
4674       </div>
4675     </div>
4676     <div class="padding"></div>
4677
4678     <div class="entry">
4679       <div class="title">
4680         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
4681       </div>
4682       <div class="date">
4683         24th November 2013
4684       </div>
4685       <div class="body">
4686         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
4687 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
4688 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
4689 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
4690 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
4691 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
4692 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
4693 is working on.  I checked the
4694 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
4695 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
4696 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
4697 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
4698 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
4699 These are the release notes:</p>
4700
4701 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
4702
4703 <ul>
4704
4705   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
4706    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
4707    up.</li>
4708
4709   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
4710
4711   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
4712    Matthias Klose.</li>
4713
4714   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
4715    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
4716
4717   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
4718    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
4719    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
4720
4721 </ul>
4722
4723 <p>You can
4724 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4725 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4726 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4727 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4728 include a testsuite check.</p>
4729
4730       </div>
4731       <div class="tags">
4732
4733
4734         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4735
4736
4737       </div>
4738     </div>
4739     <div class="padding"></div>
4740
4741     <div class="entry">
4742       <div class="title">
4743         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
4744       </div>
4745       <div class="date">
4746         21st November 2013
4747       </div>
4748       <div class="body">
4749         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
4750 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
4751 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
4752 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
4753 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
4754 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
4755 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
4756 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
4757 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
4758 TED talk
4759 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
4760 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
4761 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
4762
4763 <blockquote>
4764
4765 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
4766 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
4767 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
4768 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
4769 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
4770 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
4771 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
4772 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
4773 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
4774 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
4775 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
4776
4777 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
4778 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
4779 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
4780
4781 </blockquote>
4782
4783 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
4784 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
4785 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
4786 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
4787 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
4788 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
4789 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
4790 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
4791 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
4792
4793       </div>
4794       <div class="tags">
4795
4796
4797         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4798
4799
4800       </div>
4801     </div>
4802     <div class="padding"></div>
4803
4804     <div class="entry">
4805       <div class="title">
4806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
4807       </div>
4808       <div class="date">
4809         13th November 2013
4810       </div>
4811       <div class="body">
4812         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
4813 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
4814 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
4815 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
4816 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
4817 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
4818 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
4819 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
4820 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
4821 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
4822 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
4823 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
4824 right away. :)</p>
4825
4826       </div>
4827       <div class="tags">
4828
4829
4830         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4831
4832
4833       </div>
4834     </div>
4835     <div class="padding"></div>
4836
4837     <div class="entry">
4838       <div class="title">
4839         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
4840       </div>
4841       <div class="date">
4842         10th November 2013
4843       </div>
4844       <div class="body">
4845         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
4846 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
4847 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
4848 MR3040 as a mesh node using
4849 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
4850
4851 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
4852 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
4853 and downloaded
4854 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
4855 recommended firmware image</a>
4856 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
4857 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
4858 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
4859 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
4860 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
4861
4862 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
4863 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
4864 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
4865 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
4866 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
4867 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
4868 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
4869 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
4870 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
4871 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
4872 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
4873 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
4874 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
4875
4876 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
4877 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
4878 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
4879 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
4880 them:</p>
4881
4882 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
4883
4884 <pre>
4885
4886 config interface 'loopback'
4887         option ifname 'lo'
4888         option proto 'static'
4889         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
4890         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
4891
4892 config globals 'globals'
4893         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
4894
4895 config interface 'lan'
4896         option ifname 'eth0'
4897         option type 'bridge'
4898         option proto 'dhcp'
4899         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
4900         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
4901         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
4902         option ip6assign '60'
4903
4904 config interface 'mesh'
4905         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4906         option mtu '1528'
4907         option proto 'batadv'
4908         option mesh 'bat0'
4909 </pre>
4910
4911 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
4912 <pre>
4913
4914 config wifi-device 'radio0'
4915         option type 'mac80211'
4916         option channel '11'
4917         option hwmode '11ng'
4918         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
4919         option htmode 'HT20'
4920         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
4921         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
4922         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
4923         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
4924         option disabled '0'
4925
4926 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
4927         option device 'radio0'
4928         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4929         option network 'mesh'
4930         option encryption 'none'
4931         option mode 'adhoc'
4932         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
4933         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
4934 </pre>
4935 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
4936 <pre>
4937
4938 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
4939         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
4940         option 'aggregated_ogms'
4941         option 'ap_isolation'
4942         option 'bonding'
4943         option 'fragmentation'
4944         option 'gw_bandwidth'
4945         option 'gw_mode'
4946         option 'gw_sel_class'
4947         option 'log_level'
4948         option 'orig_interval'
4949         option 'vis_mode'
4950         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
4951         option 'distributed_arp_table'
4952         option 'network_coding'
4953         option 'hop_penalty'
4954
4955 # yet another batX instance
4956 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
4957 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
4958 </pre>
4959
4960 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
4961 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
4962 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
4963
4964       </div>
4965       <div class="tags">
4966
4967
4968         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4969
4970
4971       </div>
4972     </div>
4973     <div class="padding"></div>
4974
4975     <div class="entry">
4976       <div class="title">
4977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
4978       </div>
4979       <div class="date">
4980          2nd November 2013
4981       </div>
4982       <div class="body">
4983         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
4984 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
4985 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
4986 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
4987 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
4988
4989 <p><pre>
4990 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
4991 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
4992 # Provides:          rsyslog
4993 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
4994 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
4995 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
4996 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
4997 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
4998 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
4999 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
5000 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
5001 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
5002 ### END INIT INFO
5003 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
5004 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
5005 </pre></p>
5006
5007 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
5008 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
5009 info/comments.</p>
5010
5011 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
5012 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
5013
5014 <p><pre>
5015 #!/bin/sh
5016
5017 # Define LSB log_* functions.
5018 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
5019 # and status_of_proc is working.
5020 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
5021
5022 #
5023 # Function that starts the daemon/service
5024
5025 #
5026 do_start()
5027 {
5028         # Return
5029         #   0 if daemon has been started
5030         #   1 if daemon was already running
5031         #   2 if daemon could not be started
5032         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
5033                 || return 1
5034         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
5035                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
5036                 || return 2
5037         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
5038         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
5039         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
5040 }
5041
5042 #
5043 # Function that stops the daemon/service
5044 #
5045 do_stop()
5046 {
5047         # Return
5048         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
5049         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
5050         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
5051         #   other if a failure occurred
5052         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5053         RETVAL="$?"
5054         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
5055         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
5056         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
5057         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
5058         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
5059         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
5060         # sleep for some time.
5061         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
5062         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
5063         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
5064         rm -f $PIDFILE
5065         return "$RETVAL"
5066 }
5067
5068 #
5069 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
5070 #
5071 do_reload() {
5072         #
5073         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
5074         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
5075         # then implement that here.
5076         #
5077         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5078         return 0
5079 }
5080
5081 SCRIPTNAME=$1
5082 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
5083 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
5084 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
5085     script="$1"
5086     shift
5087     . $script
5088 else
5089     exit 0
5090 fi
5091
5092 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
5093 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
5094
5095 # Exit if the package is not installed
5096 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
5097
5098 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
5099 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
5100
5101 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
5102 . /lib/init/vars.sh
5103
5104 case "$1" in
5105   start)
5106         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
5107         do_start
5108         case "$?" in
5109                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5110                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5111         esac
5112         ;;
5113   stop)
5114         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
5115         do_stop
5116         case "$?" in
5117                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5118                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5119         esac
5120         ;;
5121   status)
5122         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
5123         ;;
5124   #reload|force-reload)
5125         #
5126         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
5127         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
5128         #
5129         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
5130         #do_reload
5131         #log_end_msg $?
5132         #;;
5133   restart|force-reload)
5134         #
5135         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
5136         # 'force-reload' alias
5137         #
5138         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
5139         do_stop
5140         case "$?" in
5141           0|1)
5142                 do_start
5143                 case "$?" in
5144                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
5145                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
5146                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
5147                 esac
5148                 ;;
5149           *)
5150                 # Failed to stop
5151                 log_end_msg 1
5152                 ;;
5153         esac
5154         ;;
5155   *)
5156         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
5157         exit 3
5158         ;;
5159 esac
5160
5161 :
5162 </pre></p>
5163
5164 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
5165 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
5166 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
5167 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
5168
5169 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
5170 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
5171 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
5172 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
5173 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
5174
5175       </div>
5176       <div class="tags">
5177
5178
5179         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>.
5180
5181
5182       </div>
5183     </div>
5184     <div class="padding"></div>
5185
5186     <div class="entry">
5187       <div class="title">
5188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
5189       </div>
5190       <div class="date">
5191          1st November 2013
5192       </div>
5193       <div class="body">
5194         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
5195 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
5196 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
5197 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
5198 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
5199 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
5200 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
5201 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
5202 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
5203 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
5204 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
5205 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
5206
5207 <p>The source is now available from
5208 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
5209
5210       </div>
5211       <div class="tags">
5212
5213
5214         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>.
5215
5216
5217       </div>
5218     </div>
5219     <div class="padding"></div>
5220
5221     <div class="entry">
5222       <div class="title">
5223         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
5224       </div>
5225       <div class="date">
5226         27th October 2013
5227       </div>
5228       <div class="body">
5229         <p>The
5230 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
5231 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
5232 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
5233 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
5234 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
5235 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
5236 of a plan to simplify the build system for
5237 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
5238 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
5239 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
5240 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
5241 Raspberry Pi.</p>
5242
5243 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
5244 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
5245 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
5246 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
5247 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
5248 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
5249 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
5250 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
5251 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
5252 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
5253 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
5254 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
5255 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
5256 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
5257 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
5258 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
5259 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
5260 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
5261 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
5262 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
5263 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
5264 available from
5265 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
5266 upstream project page</a>.</p>
5267
5268 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
5269 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
5270 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
5271 list:</p>
5272
5273 <p><pre>
5274 #!/bin/sh
5275 set -e # Exit on first error
5276 rootdir="$1"
5277 cd "$rootdir"
5278 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
5279 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
5280 EOF
5281 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
5282 # install a kernel somewhere too.
5283 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
5284     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5285 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5286 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
5287 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
5288 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
5289 </pre></p>
5290
5291 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
5292 to build the image:</p>
5293
5294 <pre>
5295 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
5296     --variant minbase \
5297     --arch armel \
5298     --distribution jessie \
5299     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
5300     --image test.img \
5301     --size 600M \
5302     --bootsize 64M \
5303     --boottype vfat \
5304     --log-level debug \
5305     --verbose \
5306     --no-kernel \
5307     --no-extlinux \
5308     --root-password raspberry \
5309     --hostname raspberrypi \
5310     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
5311     --customize `pwd`/customize \
5312     --package netbase \
5313     --package git-core \
5314     --package binutils \
5315     --package ca-certificates \
5316     --package wget \
5317     --package kmod
5318 </pre></p>
5319
5320 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
5321 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
5322 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
5323 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
5324 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
5325 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
5326 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
5327
5328 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
5329 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
5330 build dependency list.</p>
5331
5332 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
5333 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
5334 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
5335 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
5336
5337       </div>
5338       <div class="tags">
5339
5340
5341         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
5342
5343
5344       </div>
5345     </div>
5346     <div class="padding"></div>
5347
5348     <div class="entry">
5349       <div class="title">
5350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
5351       </div>
5352       <div class="date">
5353         21st October 2013
5354       </div>
5355       <div class="body">
5356         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
5357 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
5358 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
5359 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
5360 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
5361 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
5362 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
5363 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
5364
5365 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
5366 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
5367 instead, I started playing with a
5368 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
5369 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
5370 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
5371 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
5372 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
5373 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
5374 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
5375 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
5376 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
5377 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
5378 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
5379 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
5380 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
5381 every client on the local network.</p>
5382
5383 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
5384 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
5385 and a script
5386 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
5387 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
5388 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
5389 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
5390 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
5391 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
5392 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
5393 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
5394 support.</p>
5395
5396 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
5397 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
5398
5399 <p><pre>
5400 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
5401     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
5402 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
5403 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
5404 %
5405 </pre></p>
5406
5407 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
5408 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
5409 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
5410 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
5411 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
5412 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
5413
5414 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
5415 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
5416 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
5417
5418 <p><table>
5419
5420 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
5421 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
5422 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
5423 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
5424 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
5425 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
5426
5427 </table></p>
5428
5429 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
5430 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
5431 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
5432 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
5433 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
5434 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
5435 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
5436
5437       </div>
5438       <div class="tags">
5439
5440
5441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5442
5443
5444       </div>
5445     </div>
5446     <div class="padding"></div>
5447
5448     <div class="entry">
5449       <div class="title">
5450         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
5451       </div>
5452       <div class="date">
5453         19th October 2013
5454       </div>
5455       <div class="body">
5456         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
5457 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
5458 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
5459 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
5460 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
5461 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
5462 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
5463 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
5464
5465       </div>
5466       <div class="tags">
5467
5468
5469         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
5470
5471
5472       </div>
5473     </div>
5474     <div class="padding"></div>
5475
5476     <div class="entry">
5477       <div class="title">
5478         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
5479       </div>
5480       <div class="date">
5481         15th October 2013
5482       </div>
5483       <div class="body">
5484         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
5485 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
5486 these. :)</p>
5487
5488 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
5489 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
5490 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
5491 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
5492 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
5493 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
5494 hope you will to. :)</p>
5495
5496 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
5497 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
5498 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
5499 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
5500 donated.  Are you next?</p>
5501
5502 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
5503 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
5504 statement under the heading
5505 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
5506 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
5507 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
5508 too.</p>
5509
5510       </div>
5511       <div class="tags">
5512
5513
5514         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5515
5516
5517       </div>
5518     </div>
5519     <div class="padding"></div>
5520
5521     <div class="entry">
5522       <div class="title">
5523         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
5524       </div>
5525       <div class="date">
5526         11th October 2013
5527       </div>
5528       <div class="body">
5529         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
5530 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
5531 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
5532 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
5533 successful examples like
5534 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
5535 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
5536 (see
5537 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
5538 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
5539 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
5540 can be seen from their
5541 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
5542 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
5543 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
5544 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
5545 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
5546
5547 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
5548 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
5549 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
5550 my recent involvement in
5551 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
5552 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
5553 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
5554 when possible, given that most communication between people are
5555 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
5556 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
5557 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
5558 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
5559 important over the years.</p>
5560
5561 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
5562 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
5563 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
5564 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
5565 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
5566 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
5567 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
5568 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
5569 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
5570 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
5571 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
5572 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
5573 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
5574 speakers about this talk (from
5575 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
5576
5577 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
5578
5579 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
5580 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
5581 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
5582 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
5583 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
5584 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
5585 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
5586 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
5587 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
5588 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
5589 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
5590 that project (from
5591 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
5592
5593 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
5594
5595 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
5596 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
5597 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
5598 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
5599 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
5600 based community mesh networks.</p>
5601
5602 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
5603 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
5604 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
5605 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
5606 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
5607 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
5608 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
5609 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
5610 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
5611
5612 <p><table>
5613 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
5614 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
5615 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
5616 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
5617 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
5618 </table></p>
5619
5620 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
5621 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
5622 VillageTelco about
5623 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
5624 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
5625 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
5626 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
5627 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
5628 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
5629
5630 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
5631 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
5632 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
5633 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
5634
5635 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
5636 us on IRC, either channel
5637 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
5638 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
5639 irc.freenode.net.</p>
5640
5641 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
5642 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
5643 and Innovation called
5644 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
5645 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
5646 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
5647 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
5648 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
5649 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
5650 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
5651 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
5652
5653 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
5654 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
5655 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
5656 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
5657 mesh system.</p>
5658
5659       </div>
5660       <div class="tags">
5661
5662
5663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5664
5665
5666       </div>
5667     </div>
5668     <div class="padding"></div>
5669
5670     <div class="entry">
5671       <div class="title">
5672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
5673       </div>
5674       <div class="date">
5675          8th October 2013
5676       </div>
5677       <div class="body">
5678         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
5679 Salvador had published a
5680 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
5681 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
5682 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
5683 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
5684 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
5685 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
5686 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
5687 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
5688 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
5689 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
5690 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
5691 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
5692 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
5693 computers without hard drives by installing one central
5694 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
5695
5696 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
5697
5698 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
5699
5700 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
5701 me know. :)</p>
5702
5703       </div>
5704       <div class="tags">
5705
5706
5707         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
5708
5709
5710       </div>
5711     </div>
5712     <div class="padding"></div>
5713
5714     <div class="entry">
5715       <div class="title">
5716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
5717       </div>
5718       <div class="date">
5719         29th September 2013
5720       </div>
5721       <div class="body">
5722         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
5723 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
5724 complete announcement text can be found at
5725 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
5726 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
5727
5728 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
5729 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
5730 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
5731 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
5732
5733       </div>
5734       <div class="tags">
5735
5736
5737         Tags: <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>.
5738
5739
5740       </div>
5741     </div>
5742     <div class="padding"></div>
5743
5744     <div class="entry">
5745       <div class="title">
5746         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
5747       </div>
5748       <div class="date">
5749         27th September 2013
5750       </div>
5751       <div class="body">
5752         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
5753 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
5754 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
5755 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
5756
5757 <ul>
5758
5759 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
5760 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
5761
5762 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
5763 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5764
5765 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
5766 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
5767 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
5768 (Youtube)</li>
5769
5770 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
5771 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
5772
5773 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
5774 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5775
5776 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
5777 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
5778 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
5779
5780 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
5781 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
5782 (Youtube)</li>
5783
5784 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
5785 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
5786
5787 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
5788 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
5789
5790 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
5791 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
5792 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
5793
5794 </ul>
5795
5796 <p>A larger list is available from
5797 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
5798 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
5799
5800 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
5801 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
5802 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
5803 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
5804 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
5805 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
5806 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
5807 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
5808 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
5809 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5810 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5811
5812       </div>
5813       <div class="tags">
5814
5815
5816         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5817
5818
5819       </div>
5820     </div>
5821     <div class="padding"></div>
5822
5823     <div class="entry">
5824       <div class="title">
5825         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
5826       </div>
5827       <div class="date">
5828         16th September 2013
5829       </div>
5830       <div class="body">
5831         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5832 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
5833
5834 <blockquote>
5835 <p>Hi,</p>
5836
5837 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
5838 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5839 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
5840
5841 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
5842 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
5843 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
5844 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
5845
5846 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
5847 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
5848
5849 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
5850 compared to beta1:</p>
5851
5852 <ul>
5853
5854 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
5855 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
5856 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
5857 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
5858 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
5859 main server.</li>
5860 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
5861 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
5862 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
5863 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
5864 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
5865
5866 </ul>
5867
5868 <p>Where to get it:</p>
5869
5870 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5871
5872 <ul>
5873 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
5874 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
5875 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
5876 </ul>
5877
5878 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
5879
5880 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
5881 <ul>
5882 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
5883 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
5884 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
5885 </ul>
5886
5887 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
5888
5889 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
5890 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
5891 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
5892 as the other isos.</p>
5893
5894 <p>How to report bugs</p>
5895
5896 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
5897 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5898
5899
5900 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
5901
5902 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
5903 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
5904 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
5905 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
5906 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
5907 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
5908 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
5909 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
5910 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
5911 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
5912 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
5913 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
5914 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5915
5916 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5917 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5918 Squeeze release.</p>
5919
5920 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
5921
5922 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5923 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5924 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5925 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5926 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
5927 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
5928 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
5929 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
5930 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
5931 directory.</p>
5932
5933
5934 <p>cheers,
5935 <br>        Holger</p>
5936 </blockquote>
5937
5938       </div>
5939       <div class="tags">
5940
5941
5942         Tags: <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>.
5943
5944
5945       </div>
5946     </div>
5947     <div class="padding"></div>
5948
5949     <div class="entry">
5950       <div class="title">
5951         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
5952       </div>
5953       <div class="date">
5954         10th September 2013
5955       </div>
5956       <div class="body">
5957         <p>I was introduced to the
5958 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
5959 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
5960 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
5961 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
5962 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
5963 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
5964 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
5965 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
5966
5967 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
5968 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
5969 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
5970 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
5971 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
5972
5973 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
5974 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
5975 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
5976 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
5977 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
5978 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
5979 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
5980 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
5981 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
5982 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
5983 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
5984 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
5985 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
5986 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
5987 missing in Debian).</p>
5988
5989 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
5990 scripts
5991 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
5992 and a administrative web interface
5993 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
5994 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
5995 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
5996 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
5997 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
5998 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
5999 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6000 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6001 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6002 this is really working yet, see
6003 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6004 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6005 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6006 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6007 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6008 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6009 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6010
6011 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6012 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6013 at.</p>
6014
6015 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
6016
6017 <ol>
6018
6019 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
6020 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
6021 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
6022 to the Debian installer:<p>
6023 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
6024
6025 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
6026 install on.</li>
6027
6028 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
6029 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
6030
6031 </ol>
6032
6033 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
6034
6035 <ol>
6036
6037 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
6038 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
6039 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
6040 <pre>
6041 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
6042 </pre></li>
6043 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
6044 <pre>
6045 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
6046    apt-key add -
6047 apt-get update
6048 apt-get install freedombox-setup
6049 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
6050 </pre></li>
6051 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
6052
6053 </ol>
6054
6055 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
6056 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
6057 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
6058 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
6059 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
6060
6061 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
6062 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
6063 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
6064 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
6065
6066 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
6067 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
6068 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
6069 irc.debian.org and the
6070 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
6071 mailing list</a>.</p>
6072
6073 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
6074 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
6075 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
6076 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
6077 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
6078 default password is 'secret'.</p>
6079
6080       </div>
6081       <div class="tags">
6082
6083
6084         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6085
6086
6087       </div>
6088     </div>
6089     <div class="padding"></div>
6090
6091     <div class="entry">
6092       <div class="title">
6093         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6094       </div>
6095       <div class="date">
6096         22nd August 2013
6097       </div>
6098       <div class="body">
6099         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6100 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
6101 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
6102
6103 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
6104
6105 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6106 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6107
6108 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6109
6110 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6111 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6112 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6113 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6114 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6115 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6116 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6117 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
6118 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6119 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6120 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6121 desktop contains
6122 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6123 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6124 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6125 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6126
6127 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
6128 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
6129 release.</p>
6130
6131 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6132 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6133 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6134 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6135 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
6136 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
6137 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
6138 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
6139 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
6140 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
6141 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
6142
6143 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6144
6145 <ul>
6146
6147 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
6148     work also without a attached tty.</li>
6149 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
6150     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
6151     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
6152     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
6153     required).</li>
6154
6155 </ul>
6156
6157 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6158
6159 <ul>
6160
6161 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
6162 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
6163 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
6164 stick ISO image.</li>
6165 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
6166 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
6167 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
6168     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
6169     cope with this.</li>
6170 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
6171 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
6172     empty password hashes.</li>
6173 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
6174     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
6175     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
6176
6177 </ul>
6178
6179 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6180
6181 <ul>
6182
6183 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
6184     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
6185 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
6186     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
6187
6188 </ul>
6189
6190 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6191
6192 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6193
6194 <ul>
6195
6196 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
6197
6198 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
6199
6200 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
6201
6202 </ul>
6203
6204 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
6205 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
6206
6207 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6208
6209 <ul>
6210
6211 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
6212 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
6213 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
6214
6215 </ul>
6216
6217 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
6218 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
6219
6220
6221 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6222
6223 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
6224
6225       </div>
6226       <div class="tags">
6227
6228
6229         Tags: <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>.
6230
6231
6232       </div>
6233     </div>
6234     <div class="padding"></div>
6235
6236     <div class="entry">
6237       <div class="title">
6238         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
6239       </div>
6240       <div class="date">
6241         18th August 2013
6242       </div>
6243       <div class="body">
6244         <p>Earlier, I reported about
6245 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
6246 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
6247 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
6248 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
6249 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
6250 currently on the disk.</p>
6251
6252 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
6253 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
6254 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
6255 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
6256 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
6257 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
6258 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
6259 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
6260 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
6261 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
6262 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
6263 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
6264 the broken disks.</p>
6265
6266       </div>
6267       <div class="tags">
6268
6269
6270         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>.
6271
6272
6273       </div>
6274     </div>
6275     <div class="padding"></div>
6276
6277     <div class="entry">
6278       <div class="title">
6279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
6280       </div>
6281       <div class="date">
6282          2nd August 2013
6283       </div>
6284       <div class="body">
6285         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
6286 have worked on a Norwegian
6287 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
6288 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
6289 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
6290 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
6291 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
6292 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
6293 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
6294 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
6295 progress of the translation:</p>
6296
6297 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
6298
6299 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
6300 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
6301 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
6302 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
6303 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
6304 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
6305 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
6306 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
6307 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
6308 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
6309 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
6310
6311 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
6312 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
6313 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
6314 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
6315 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
6316 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
6317 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
6318 project files currently available from
6319 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6320
6321 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6322 the updated
6323 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6324 and
6325 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6326 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6327 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6328 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6329
6330       </div>
6331       <div class="tags">
6332
6333
6334         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
6335
6336
6337       </div>
6338     </div>
6339     <div class="padding"></div>
6340
6341     <div class="entry">
6342       <div class="title">
6343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6344       </div>
6345       <div class="date">
6346         27th July 2013
6347       </div>
6348       <div class="body">
6349         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6350 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6351
6352 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
6353 2013-07-27</strong></p>
6354
6355 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6356 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6357
6358 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6359
6360 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6361 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6362 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6363 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6364 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6365 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6366 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6367 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6368 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6369 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6370 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6371 desktop contains
6372 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6373 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6374 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6375 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6376
6377 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6378 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6379 Squeeze release.</p>
6380
6381 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6382 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6383 release.</p>
6384
6385 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6386
6387 <ul>
6388
6389 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
6390    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
6391 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
6392    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
6393    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
6394    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
6395    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
6396 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
6397 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
6398 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
6399    crash bugs.</li>
6400
6401 </ul>
6402
6403 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6404
6405 <ul>
6406
6407 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
6408    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
6409 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
6410    netinst CD.</li>
6411 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
6412    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
6413 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
6414    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
6415    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
6416 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
6417    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
6418    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
6419 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
6420    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
6421    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
6422 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
6423    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
6424 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
6425
6426 </ul>
6427
6428 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6429
6430 <ul>
6431
6432 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
6433 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
6434     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
6435 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
6436
6437 </ul>
6438
6439 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6440
6441 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6442
6443 <ul>
6444
6445 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
6446
6447 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
6448
6449 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
6450
6451 </ul>
6452
6453 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
6454 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
6455
6456 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6457
6458 <ul>
6459
6460 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
6461 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
6462 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
6463
6464 </ul>
6465
6466 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
6467 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
6468
6469
6470 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6471
6472 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
6473
6474       </div>
6475       <div class="tags">
6476
6477
6478         Tags: <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>.
6479
6480
6481       </div>
6482     </div>
6483     <div class="padding"></div>
6484
6485     <div class="entry">
6486       <div class="title">
6487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
6488       </div>
6489       <div class="date">
6490         17th July 2013
6491       </div>
6492       <div class="body">
6493         <p>Today I switched to
6494 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
6495 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
6496 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
6497 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
6498 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
6499 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
6500 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
6501 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
6502 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
6503 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
6504 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
6505 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
6506 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
6507 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
6508 station from now on.</p>
6509
6510 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
6511 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
6512 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
6513 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
6514 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
6515 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
6516 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
6517 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
6518 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
6519 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
6520 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
6521 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
6522
6523 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
6524 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
6525 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
6526 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
6527 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
6528 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
6529 parameters are tuned:</p>
6530
6531 <ul>
6532
6533 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
6534     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
6535
6536 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
6537     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
6538     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
6539
6540 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
6541     systems.</li>
6542
6543 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
6544     /etc/fstab.</li>
6545
6546 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
6547
6548 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
6549     cron.daily).</li>
6550
6551 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
6552     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
6553
6554 </ul>
6555
6556 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
6557 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
6558 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
6559 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
6560 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
6561 from getting the data on the disk (see
6562 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
6563 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
6564 right thing to do.</p>
6565
6566 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
6567 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
6568 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
6569
6570 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
6571 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
6572 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
6573 instead of during my work.</p>
6574
6575 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
6576 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
6577
6578 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
6579 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
6580 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
6581
6582 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
6583 there.</p>
6584
6585 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
6586 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
6587 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
6588 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
6589 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
6590 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
6591 back.</p>
6592
6593       </div>
6594       <div class="tags">
6595
6596
6597         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>.
6598
6599
6600       </div>
6601     </div>
6602     <div class="padding"></div>
6603
6604     <div class="entry">
6605       <div class="title">
6606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
6607       </div>
6608       <div class="date">
6609         10th July 2013
6610       </div>
6611       <div class="body">
6612         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
6613 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
6614 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
6615 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
6616 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
6617 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
6618 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
6619 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
6620
6621 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
6622 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
6623 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
6624 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
6625 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
6626 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
6627 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
6628 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
6629 lock up when I download a new
6630 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
6631 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
6632 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
6633
6634 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6635 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
6636 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6637 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
6638 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6639 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6640
6641 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6642 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
6643 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6644 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
6645 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6646 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6647
6648 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
6649 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
6650 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
6651 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
6652 exist).</p>
6653
6654       </div>
6655       <div class="tags">
6656
6657
6658         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>.
6659
6660
6661       </div>
6662     </div>
6663     <div class="padding"></div>
6664
6665     <div class="entry">
6666       <div class="title">
6667         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
6668       </div>
6669       <div class="date">
6670          9th July 2013
6671       </div>
6672       <div class="body">
6673         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
6674 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
6675 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
6676 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
6677 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6678 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
6679 Bitraf</a>.</p>
6680
6681 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
6682 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
6683 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
6684 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
6685 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
6686
6687       </div>
6688       <div class="tags">
6689
6690
6691         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>.
6692
6693
6694       </div>
6695     </div>
6696     <div class="padding"></div>
6697
6698     <div class="entry">
6699       <div class="title">
6700         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
6701       </div>
6702       <div class="date">
6703          5th July 2013
6704       </div>
6705       <div class="body">
6706         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
6707 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
6708 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
6709 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
6710 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
6711 ended up picking a
6712 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
6713 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
6714 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
6715 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
6716 on that below.</p>
6717
6718 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
6719 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
6720 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
6721 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
6722 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
6723 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
6724 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
6725 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
6726 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
6727
6728 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
6729 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
6730 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
6731 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
6732 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
6733 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
6734 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
6735
6736 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
6737 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
6738
6739 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
6740 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
6741 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
6742 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
6743 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
6744 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
6745 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
6746 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
6747 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
6748 kernel developers as
6749 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
6750 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
6751 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
6752 Lenovo forums, both for
6753 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
6754 2012-11-10</a> and for
6755 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
6756 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
6757 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
6758 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
6759 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
6760 There is even a
6761 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
6762 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
6763 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
6764
6765 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
6766 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
6767 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
6768 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
6769 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
6770 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
6771 fixed. :)</p>
6772
6773       </div>
6774       <div class="tags">
6775
6776
6777         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>.
6778
6779
6780       </div>
6781     </div>
6782     <div class="padding"></div>
6783
6784     <div class="entry">
6785       <div class="title">
6786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
6787       </div>
6788       <div class="date">
6789          4th July 2013
6790       </div>
6791       <div class="body">
6792         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
6793 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
6794 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
6795 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
6796 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
6797 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
6798 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
6799 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
6800 with an expencive door stop.</p>
6801
6802 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
6803 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
6804 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
6805 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
6806 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
6807 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
6808 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
6809
6810 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
6811 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
6812 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
6813 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
6814 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
6815 new laptop now. :)</p>
6816
6817 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
6818
6819       </div>
6820       <div class="tags">
6821
6822
6823         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>.
6824
6825
6826       </div>
6827     </div>
6828     <div class="padding"></div>
6829
6830     <div class="entry">
6831       <div class="title">
6832         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6833       </div>
6834       <div class="date">
6835          3rd July 2013
6836       </div>
6837       <div class="body">
6838         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6839 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6840
6841 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
6842 2013-07-03</strong></p>
6843
6844 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6845 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6846
6847 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6848
6849 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6850 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6851 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6852 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6853 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6854 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6855 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6856 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6857 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6858 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6859 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6860 desktop contains
6861 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6862 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6863 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6864 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6865
6866 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6867 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6868 Squeeze release.</p>
6869
6870 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6871 <ul>
6872   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
6873   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
6874     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
6875     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
6876   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
6877     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
6878     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
6879   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
6880     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
6881     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
6882     too.</li>
6883   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
6884     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
6885 </ul>
6886 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6887 <ul>
6888   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
6889   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
6890   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
6891     up for some language options.</li>
6892   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
6893   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
6894   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
6895     d-i is doing it.</li>
6896   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
6897     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
6898   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
6899     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
6900     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
6901   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
6902     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
6903   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
6904   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
6905     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
6906   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
6907     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
6908 </ul>
6909 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6910 <ul>
6911   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6912     available yet (698840).</li>
6913   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
6914 </ul>
6915 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6916
6917 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6918 <ul>
6919   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
6920   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
6921   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
6922 </ul>
6923
6924 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
6925 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
6926
6927 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6928 <ul>
6929   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
6930   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
6931   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
6932 </ul>
6933
6934 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
6935 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
6936
6937 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6938
6939 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6940
6941       </div>
6942       <div class="tags">
6943
6944
6945         Tags: <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>.
6946
6947
6948       </div>
6949     </div>
6950     <div class="padding"></div>
6951
6952     <div class="entry">
6953       <div class="title">
6954         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
6955       </div>
6956       <div class="date">
6957         25th June 2013
6958       </div>
6959       <div class="body">
6960         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
6961 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
6962 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
6963 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
6964 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
6965 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
6966 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
6967 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
6968 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
6969 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
6970 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
6971
6972 <p><pre>
6973 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6974 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
6975 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
6976 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
6977 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
6978 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
6979 firmware-ipw2x00
6980 firmware-ipw2x00
6981 Preconfiguring packages ...
6982 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
6983 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
6984 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
6985 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
6986 #
6987 </pre></p>
6988
6989 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
6990 printed instead:</p>
6991
6992 <p><pre>
6993 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6994 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
6995 #
6996 </pre></p>
6997
6998 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
6999 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7000
7001 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7002 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7003 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7004 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7005 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7006 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7007 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7008 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7009 machine.</p>
7010
7011 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7012 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7013 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7014 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7015 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7016 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7017
7018       </div>
7019       <div class="tags">
7020
7021
7022         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7023
7024
7025       </div>
7026     </div>
7027     <div class="padding"></div>
7028
7029     <div class="entry">
7030       <div class="title">
7031         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
7032       </div>
7033       <div class="date">
7034         22nd June 2013
7035       </div>
7036       <div class="body">
7037         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7038 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
7039 which check that services are running, working, and return the
7040 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
7041 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
7042 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
7043 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
7044 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
7045 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
7046
7047 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
7048 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
7049 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
7050 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
7051 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
7052 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
7053 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
7054 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
7055 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
7056 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
7057 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
7058 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
7059 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
7060 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
7061
7062 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
7063 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
7064 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
7065 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
7066 the problem.</p>
7067
7068 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
7069 please join us on
7070 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
7071 irc.debian.org</a> and the
7072 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
7073 list.</p>
7074
7075       </div>
7076       <div class="tags">
7077
7078
7079         Tags: <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>.
7080
7081
7082       </div>
7083     </div>
7084     <div class="padding"></div>
7085
7086     <div class="entry">
7087       <div class="title">
7088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
7089       </div>
7090       <div class="date">
7091         17th June 2013
7092       </div>
7093       <div class="body">
7094         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
7095 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
7096 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
7097 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
7098 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
7099 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
7100 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
7101 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
7102
7103 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7104
7105 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
7106 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
7107 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
7108 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
7109 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
7110 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
7111 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
7112 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
7113 field.</p>
7114
7115 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
7116 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
7117 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
7118 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
7119 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
7120 the only one we have in our country.</p>
7121
7122 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7123 project?</strong></p>
7124
7125 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
7126 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
7127 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
7128 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
7129 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
7130 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
7131 ways to contribute.</p>
7132
7133 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
7134 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
7135 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
7136 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
7137 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
7138 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
7139 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
7140 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
7141 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
7142 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
7143
7144 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7145 Edu?</strong></p>
7146
7147 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
7148 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
7149 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
7150 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
7151 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
7152 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
7153 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
7154 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
7155
7156 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
7157 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
7158 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
7159 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
7160 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
7161 project.</p>
7162
7163 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7164 Edu?</strong></p>
7165
7166 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
7167 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
7168 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
7169 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
7170 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
7171 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
7172 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
7173 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
7174 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
7175
7176 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
7177 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
7178 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
7179 on.</p>
7180
7181 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7182
7183 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
7184 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
7185 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
7186 Enlightenment project a lot!),
7187 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
7188 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
7189 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
7190 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
7191 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
7192
7193 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7194 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7195
7196 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
7197 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
7198 that:</p>
7199
7200 <ul>
7201
7202 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
7203
7204 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
7205     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
7206     of teenagers more?</li>
7207
7208 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
7209     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
7210     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
7211     them!)</li>
7212
7213 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
7214     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
7215     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
7216
7217 </ul>
7218
7219 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
7220 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
7221 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
7222 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
7223 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
7224
7225       </div>
7226       <div class="tags">
7227
7228
7229         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
7230
7231
7232       </div>
7233     </div>
7234     <div class="padding"></div>
7235
7236     <div class="entry">
7237       <div class="title">
7238         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
7239       </div>
7240       <div class="date">
7241         12th June 2013
7242       </div>
7243       <div class="body">
7244         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
7245 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7246 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
7247 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
7248 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
7249 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
7250
7251 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7252
7253 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
7254 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
7255 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
7256
7257 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
7258 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
7259 each other.</p>
7260
7261 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7262 project?</strong></p>
7263
7264 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
7265 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
7266 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
7267 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
7268 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
7269 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
7270 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
7271 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
7272 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
7273 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
7274 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
7275 we'll get there one day.</p>
7276
7277 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7278 Edu?</strong></p>
7279
7280 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
7281 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
7282 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
7283 very high quality work.</p>
7284
7285 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
7286 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
7287 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
7288 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
7289 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
7290
7291 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7292 Edu?</strong></p>
7293
7294 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
7295 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
7296 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
7297
7298 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
7299 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
7300 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
7301 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
7302 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
7303 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
7304 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
7305 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
7306 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
7307 currently.</p>
7308
7309 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
7310 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
7311 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
7312 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
7313 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
7314 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
7315 autonomous.</p>
7316
7317 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7318
7319 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
7320 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
7321 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
7322 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
7323 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
7324
7325 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
7326 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
7327 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
7328 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
7329 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
7330 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
7331 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
7332 X.</p>
7333
7334 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
7335 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
7336 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
7337 it :p)
7338
7339 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7340 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7341
7342 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
7343 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
7344 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
7345 that.</p>
7346
7347 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
7348 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
7349 advantage of that.</p>
7350
7351 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
7352 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
7353 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
7354 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
7355 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
7356 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
7357 best solution for them.</p>
7358
7359 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
7360 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
7361 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
7362
7363       </div>
7364       <div class="tags">
7365
7366
7367         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
7368
7369
7370       </div>
7371     </div>
7372     <div class="padding"></div>
7373
7374     <div class="entry">
7375       <div class="title">
7376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
7377       </div>
7378       <div class="date">
7379         11th June 2013
7380       </div>
7381       <div class="body">
7382         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
7383 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
7384 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
7385 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
7386 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
7387 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
7388 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
7389 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
7390 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
7391 i915 driver used by the
7392 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7393 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
7394
7395 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
7396 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
7397 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
7398 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
7399 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
7400
7401 <pre>
7402 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
7403 update-initramfs -u -k all
7404 </pre>
7405
7406 <p>Since March 2012 there is
7407 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
7408 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
7409 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
7410 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
7411 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
7412 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
7413 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
7414 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
7415 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
7416 number.</p>
7417
7418 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
7419 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
7420
7421 <p><pre>
7422 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
7423     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
7424     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
7425  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
7426  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
7427     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
7428  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
7429     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
7430  Latency: 0
7431  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
7432  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
7433  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
7434  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
7435  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
7436  Capabilities: <access denied>
7437  Kernel driver in use: i915
7438 </pre></p>
7439
7440 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
7441
7442 <p><pre>
7443 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
7444        ...
7445         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
7446         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
7447        ...
7448 }
7449 </pre></p>
7450
7451 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
7452 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
7453 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
7454 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
7455 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
7456 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
7457 yet shown up in
7458 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
7459 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
7460 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
7461 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
7462 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
7463 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
7464
7465 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
7466 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
7467 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
7468 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
7469 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
7470 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
7471 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
7472 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
7473 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
7474 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
7475 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
7476 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
7477
7478 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
7479 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
7480 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
7481 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
7482 backlight.</p>
7483
7484       </div>
7485       <div class="tags">
7486
7487
7488         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>.
7489
7490
7491       </div>
7492     </div>
7493     <div class="padding"></div>
7494
7495     <div class="entry">
7496       <div class="title">
7497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7498       </div>
7499       <div class="date">
7500         10th June 2013
7501       </div>
7502       <div class="body">
7503         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7504 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7505
7506 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
7507 2013-06-10</strong></p>
7508
7509 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
7510 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7511
7512 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7513
7514 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7515 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7516 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7517 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7518 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7519 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7520 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7521 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7522 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7523 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7524 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7525 desktop contains
7526 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7527 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7528 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7529 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7530
7531 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7532 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7533 Squeeze release.</p>
7534
7535 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7536
7537 <ul>
7538
7539 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
7540 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
7541 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
7542 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
7543 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
7544
7545 </ul>
7546
7547 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7548
7549 <ul>
7550
7551 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
7552 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
7553 <li>New Romanian translation.
7554 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
7555 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
7556 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
7557 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
7558 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
7559 <li>More testsuite tests.
7560 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
7561 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
7562
7563 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
7564 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
7565
7566 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
7567 them up with GOsa².</li>
7568
7569 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
7570
7571 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
7572 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
7573 entered password). </li>
7574
7575 </ul>
7576
7577 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7578
7579 <ul>
7580
7581 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
7582
7583 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7584 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
7585 missing import feature).</li>
7586
7587 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
7588
7589 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
7590 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
7591 unfixed.</li>
7592
7593 </ul>
7594
7595 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7596
7597 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7598
7599 <ul>
7600
7601 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
7602
7603 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
7604
7605 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
7606
7607 </ul>
7608
7609 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
7610 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
7611
7612 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7613
7614 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7615
7616       </div>
7617       <div class="tags">
7618
7619
7620         Tags: <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>.
7621
7622
7623       </div>
7624     </div>
7625     <div class="padding"></div>
7626
7627     <div class="entry">
7628       <div class="title">
7629         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
7630       </div>
7631       <div class="date">
7632          5th June 2013
7633       </div>
7634       <div class="body">
7635         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
7636 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
7637 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
7638 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
7639 the project:
7640
7641 <ol>
7642
7643 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
7644   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
7645   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
7646   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
7647   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
7648
7649 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
7650   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
7651   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
7652   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
7653   #698840</a>.</li>
7654
7655 </ol>
7656
7657 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
7658 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
7659 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
7660
7661       </div>
7662       <div class="tags">
7663
7664
7665         Tags: <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>.
7666
7667
7668       </div>
7669     </div>
7670     <div class="padding"></div>
7671
7672     <div class="entry">
7673       <div class="title">
7674         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
7675       </div>
7676       <div class="date">
7677          4th June 2013
7678       </div>
7679       <div class="body">
7680         <p>It has been a while since my last English
7681 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7682 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
7683 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
7684 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
7685 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
7686
7687 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7688
7689 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
7690 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
7691 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
7692 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
7693
7694 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
7695 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
7696 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
7697
7698 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7699 project?</strong></p>
7700
7701 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
7702 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
7703 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
7704 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
7705 manual.
7706
7707 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
7708 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
7709 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
7710 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
7711
7712 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
7713 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
7714 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
7715 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
7716 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
7717 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
7718 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
7719 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
7720 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
7721 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
7722
7723 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
7724 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
7725 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
7726 beautiful project.</p>
7727
7728 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7729 Edu?</strong></p>
7730
7731 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
7732 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
7733 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
7734
7735 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
7736 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
7737 of educational free software.</p>
7738
7739 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7740 Edu?</strong></p>
7741
7742 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
7743 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
7744 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
7745 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
7746 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
7747
7748 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
7749 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
7750 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
7751 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
7752 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
7753 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
7754 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
7755 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
7756
7757 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7758
7759 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
7760 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
7761 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
7762 also using the mathematical software
7763 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
7764 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
7765 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
7766
7767 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
7768 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
7769 statistics?</strong></p>
7770
7771 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
7772 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
7773 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
7774 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
7775
7776 <ul>
7777
7778 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
7779 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
7780 constructions in planar geometry
7781
7782 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
7783 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
7784 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
7785
7786 </ul>
7787
7788 <p>I like also
7789 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
7790 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
7791 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
7792
7793 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7794 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7795
7796 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
7797
7798 <ul>
7799
7800 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
7801
7802 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
7803     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
7804     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
7805
7806 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
7807
7808 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
7809     system.</li>
7810
7811 </ul>
7812
7813       </div>
7814       <div class="tags">
7815
7816
7817         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
7818
7819
7820       </div>
7821     </div>
7822     <div class="padding"></div>
7823
7824     <div class="entry">
7825       <div class="title">
7826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
7827       </div>
7828       <div class="date">
7829          1st June 2013
7830       </div>
7831       <div class="body">
7832         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7833 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
7834 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
7835 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
7836 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
7837 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
7838 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
7839 program.</p>
7840
7841 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
7842
7843 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
7844 <p>
7845 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
7846 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7847 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
7848 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
7849 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7850 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
7851 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
7852 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
7853 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
7854 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
7855 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
7856 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
7857 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
7858 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
7859 </p>
7860
7861 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
7862 <p>
7863 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
7864 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
7865 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
7866 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
7867 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
7868 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
7869 </p>
7870
7871 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
7872 <p>
7873 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
7874 </p>
7875
7876 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
7877 <p>
7878 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
7879 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
7880 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
7881 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
7882 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
7883 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
7884 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
7885 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
7886 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
7887 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
7888 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
7889 </p>
7890
7891 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
7892 <p>
7893 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7894 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
7895 </p>
7896
7897 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
7898 <p>
7899 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
7900 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
7901 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
7902 </p>
7903
7904 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
7905 <p>
7906 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7907 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
7908 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
7909 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
7910 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
7911 </p>
7912
7913 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
7914 <p>
7915 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7916 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
7917 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7918 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
7919 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
7920 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
7921 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
7922 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
7923 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
7924 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
7925 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
7926 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
7927 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
7928 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
7929 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
7930 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
7931 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
7932 </p>
7933
7934 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
7935 <p>
7936 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7937 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
7938 </p>
7939
7940 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
7941 <p>
7942 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
7943 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
7944 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7945 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7946 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
7947 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
7948 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
7949 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
7950 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
7951 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
7952 </p>
7953
7954 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
7955 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
7956 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
7957 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
7958 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
7959 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
7960 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
7961
7962       </div>
7963       <div class="tags">
7964
7965
7966         Tags: <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>.
7967
7968
7969       </div>
7970     </div>
7971     <div class="padding"></div>
7972
7973     <div class="entry">
7974       <div class="title">
7975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
7976       </div>
7977       <div class="date">
7978         27th May 2013
7979       </div>
7980       <div class="body">
7981         <p>Two days ago, I asked
7982 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
7983 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
7984 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
7985 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
7986 and Windows 8.</p>
7987
7988 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
7989 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
7990 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
7991 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
7992 enough to tell.</p>
7993
7994 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
7995 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
7996 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
7997 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
7998 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
7999 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
8000 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
8001 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
8002 to follow.</p>
8003
8004 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
8005 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
8006 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
8007 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
8008 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
8009 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
8010 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
8011 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
8012
8013 <p>I've updated the
8014 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
8015 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
8016 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
8017 machine.</p>
8018
8019 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
8020 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
8021
8022       </div>
8023       <div class="tags">
8024
8025
8026         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>.
8027
8028
8029       </div>
8030     </div>
8031     <div class="padding"></div>
8032
8033     <div class="entry">
8034       <div class="title">
8035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
8036       </div>
8037       <div class="date">
8038         25th May 2013
8039       </div>
8040       <div class="body">
8041         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
8042 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
8043 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
8044 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
8045 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
8046 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
8047
8048 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
8049 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
8050 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
8051 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
8052 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
8053 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
8054 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
8055 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
8056 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
8057 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
8058
8059 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
8060 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8061 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
8062 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
8063 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
8064 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
8065
8066 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
8067 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
8068 on new Laptops?</p>
8069
8070       </div>
8071       <div class="tags">
8072
8073
8074         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>.
8075
8076
8077       </div>
8078     </div>
8079     <div class="padding"></div>
8080
8081     <div class="entry">
8082       <div class="title">
8083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
8084       </div>
8085       <div class="date">
8086         17th May 2013
8087       </div>
8088       <div class="body">
8089         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
8090 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
8091 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
8092 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
8093 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
8094 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
8095 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
8096 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
8097 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
8098 donate some money</a>.
8099
8100 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
8101 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
8102 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
8103 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
8104 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
8105
8106 <p>The script,
8107 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
8108 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
8109 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
8110 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
8111
8112 <ol>
8113
8114 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
8115 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
8116 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
8117     our configuration.</li>
8118 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
8119     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
8120     according to the profile specified in the config above,
8121     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
8122 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
8123     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
8124 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
8125
8126 </ol>
8127
8128 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
8129 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
8130 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
8131 the needed packages.</p>
8132
8133 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
8134 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
8135 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
8136 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
8137 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
8138 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
8139
8140 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
8141 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
8142 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
8143
8144 <p><pre>
8145 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
8146 DESKTOP="lxde"
8147 </pre></p>
8148
8149 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
8150 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
8151 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
8152 boot.</p>
8153
8154       </div>
8155       <div class="tags">
8156
8157
8158         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>.
8159
8160
8161       </div>
8162     </div>
8163     <div class="padding"></div>
8164
8165     <div class="entry">
8166       <div class="title">
8167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8168       </div>
8169       <div class="date">
8170         14th May 2013
8171       </div>
8172       <div class="body">
8173         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8174 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
8175 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8176
8177 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
8178 2013-05-14</strong></p>
8179
8180 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8181 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
8182 codename "Wheezy".</p>
8183
8184 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8185
8186 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
8187 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
8188 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
8189 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
8190 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
8191 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
8192 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
8193 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
8194
8195 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
8196 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
8197 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
8198
8199 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8200 <ul>
8201   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
8202     default.</li>
8203   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
8204   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
8205   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
8206     ibus-anthy.</li>
8207 </ul>
8208
8209 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8210 <ul>
8211
8212   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
8213     reliability improvements.</li>
8214   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
8215     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
8216   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
8217     problems.</li>
8218   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
8219     direct:// URL.</li>
8220   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
8221   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
8222   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
8223   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
8224     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
8225   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
8226     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
8227 </ul>
8228
8229 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8230 <ul>
8231
8232   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
8233     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
8234     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
8235   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
8236   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8237     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
8238   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
8239   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
8240   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
8241     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
8242   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
8243     password submission problem
8244     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
8245
8246 </ul>
8247
8248 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8249
8250 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8251 <ul>
8252
8253   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
8254   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
8255   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
8256
8257 </ul>
8258
8259 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
8260
8261 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
8262
8263 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8264
8265 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
8266
8267       </div>
8268       <div class="tags">
8269
8270
8271         Tags: <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>.
8272
8273
8274       </div>
8275     </div>
8276     <div class="padding"></div>
8277
8278     <div class="entry">
8279       <div class="title">
8280         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
8281       </div>
8282       <div class="date">
8283         11th May 2013
8284       </div>
8285       <div class="body">
8286         <P>In January,
8287 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
8288 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
8289 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
8290 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
8291 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
8292 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
8293 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
8294 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
8295 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
8296 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
8297 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
8298 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
8299
8300 <p><table>
8301 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
8302 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
8303 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
8304 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
8305 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
8306 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
8307 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
8308 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
8309 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
8310 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
8311 </table></p>
8312
8313 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
8314 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
8315 available in experimental.</p>
8316
8317 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
8318 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
8319 for LEGO designers.</p>
8320
8321       </div>
8322       <div class="tags">
8323
8324
8325         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8326
8327
8328       </div>
8329     </div>
8330     <div class="padding"></div>
8331
8332     <div class="entry">
8333       <div class="title">
8334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
8335       </div>
8336       <div class="date">
8337          5th May 2013
8338       </div>
8339       <div class="body">
8340         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
8341 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
8342 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
8343 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
8344 soon.</p>
8345
8346 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
8347 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
8348 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
8349 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
8350 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
8351 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
8352 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
8353 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
8354 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
8355 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
8356 Edu.</a>
8357
8358 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
8359 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
8360 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
8361 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
8362 follow.<p>
8363
8364       </div>
8365       <div class="tags">
8366
8367
8368         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>.
8369
8370
8371       </div>
8372     </div>
8373     <div class="padding"></div>
8374
8375     <div class="entry">
8376       <div class="title">
8377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8378       </div>
8379       <div class="date">
8380         26th April 2013
8381       </div>
8382       <div class="body">
8383         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
8384 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
8385 announcement:</p>
8386
8387 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
8388 2013-04-26</strong></p>
8389
8390 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
8391 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8392
8393 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8394
8395 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8396 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8397 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8398 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
8399 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8400 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8401 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8402 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8403 installed via the network.</p>
8404
8405 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
8406 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
8407 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
8408
8409 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8410
8411 <ul>
8412 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
8413   <ul>
8414      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
8415      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
8416          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
8417          manual.)</li>
8418      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
8419      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
8420      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
8421      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
8422      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
8423      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
8424      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
8425      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
8426      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
8427      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
8428      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
8429      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
8430          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
8431          manual</a> for more details.</li>
8432      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
8433          installation.</li>
8434      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
8435          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
8436   </ul></li>
8437 </ul>
8438
8439 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
8440 <ul>
8441 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
8442     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
8443     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
8444 </ul>
8445
8446 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
8447 <ul>
8448 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
8449     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
8450     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
8451 </ul>
8452
8453 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8454 <ul>
8455 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
8456     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
8457     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
8458 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
8459     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
8460     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
8461 </ul>
8462
8463 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
8464 <ul>
8465 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
8466     yet.</li>
8467 </ul>
8468
8469 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
8470
8471 <ul>
8472 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
8473     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
8474     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
8475 </ul>
8476
8477 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8478
8479 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
8480 <ul>
8481 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
8482 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
8483 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
8484 </ul>
8485
8486 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
8487
8488 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
8489
8490 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8491
8492 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
8493
8494       </div>
8495       <div class="tags">
8496
8497
8498         Tags: <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>.
8499
8500
8501       </div>
8502     </div>
8503     <div class="padding"></div>
8504
8505     <div class="entry">
8506       <div class="title">
8507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
8508       </div>
8509       <div class="date">
8510         16th April 2013
8511       </div>
8512       <div class="body">
8513         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
8514 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
8515 Details about the gathering can be found
8516 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
8517 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
8518 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
8519 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
8520 weekend.</p>
8521
8522 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
8523 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
8524 Edu release.</p>
8525
8526 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
8527
8528       </div>
8529       <div class="tags">
8530
8531
8532         Tags: <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>.
8533
8534
8535       </div>
8536     </div>
8537     <div class="padding"></div>
8538
8539     <div class="entry">
8540       <div class="title">
8541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
8542       </div>
8543       <div class="date">
8544          3rd April 2013
8545       </div>
8546       <div class="body">
8547         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
8548 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
8549 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
8550 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
8551
8552 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
8553 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
8554 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
8555 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
8556 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
8557 BTS. :)</p>
8558
8559       </div>
8560       <div class="tags">
8561
8562
8563         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8564
8565
8566       </div>
8567     </div>
8568     <div class="padding"></div>
8569
8570     <div class="entry">
8571       <div class="title">
8572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
8573       </div>
8574       <div class="date">
8575         26th March 2013
8576       </div>
8577       <div class="body">
8578         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
8579 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
8580 font you use when printing.</p>
8581
8582 <p>Three years ago,
8583 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
8584 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
8585 changed their default front from
8586 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
8587 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
8588 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
8589 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
8590 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
8591 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
8592 prints.</p>
8593
8594 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
8595 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
8596 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
8597 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
8598 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
8599 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
8600 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
8601 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
8602 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
8603 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
8604 depend on the documents printed.</p>
8605
8606 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
8607 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
8608 and save some money in the process.</p>
8609
8610 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
8611 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
8612 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
8613 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
8614 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
8615 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
8616 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
8617 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
8618 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
8619
8620       </div>
8621       <div class="tags">
8622
8623
8624         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8625
8626
8627       </div>
8628     </div>
8629     <div class="padding"></div>
8630
8631     <div class="entry">
8632       <div class="title">
8633         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
8634       </div>
8635       <div class="date">
8636         24th March 2013
8637       </div>
8638       <div class="body">
8639         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
8640 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
8641 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
8642 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
8643 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
8644 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
8645 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
8646 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
8647 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
8648 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
8649 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
8650 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
8651
8652 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
8653 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
8654 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
8655 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
8656 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
8657 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
8658 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
8659 all I had to do was to use the
8660 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
8661 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
8662 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
8663 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
8664 xsltproc/fop (aka
8665 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
8666 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
8667 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
8668 technical detail.</p>
8669
8670 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
8671 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
8672 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
8673 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
8674 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
8675 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
8676
8677 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
8678 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
8679 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
8680 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
8681 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
8682 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
8683 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
8684 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
8685 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
8686
8687 <p><blockquote><pre>
8688 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8689 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
8690   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
8691     &lt;hr/&gt;
8692   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8693 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8694 </pre></blockquote></p>
8695
8696 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
8697
8698 <p><blockquote><pre>
8699 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8700 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
8701   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
8702     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
8703       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
8704     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
8705   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8706 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8707 </pre></blockquote></p>
8708
8709 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
8710 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
8711 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
8712 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
8713 enough.</p>
8714
8715 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
8716 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
8717 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
8718 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
8719 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
8720 look like this:</p>
8721
8722 <p><blockquote><pre>
8723 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8724 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
8725   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
8726     &lt;br/&gt;
8727   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8728 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8729 </pre></blockquote></p>
8730
8731 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
8732
8733 <p><blockquote><pre>
8734 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8735 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
8736   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
8737   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
8738     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
8739   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8740 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8741 </pre></blockquote></p>
8742
8743 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
8744 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
8745 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
8746 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
8747 page.</p>
8748
8749 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
8750 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
8751 github</a>
8752 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
8753 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
8754 days.</p>
8755
8756       </div>
8757       <div class="tags">
8758
8759
8760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8761
8762
8763       </div>
8764     </div>
8765     <div class="padding"></div>
8766
8767     <div class="entry">
8768       <div class="title">
8769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
8770       </div>
8771       <div class="date">
8772         17th March 2013
8773       </div>
8774       <div class="body">
8775         <p>Via
8776 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
8777 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
8778 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
8779 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
8780 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
8781 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
8782 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
8783
8784 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
8785 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
8786
8787 <blockquote>
8788 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
8789 </blockquote>
8790
8791 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
8792
8793 <blockquote>
8794 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
8795 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
8796 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
8797 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
8798 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
8799 </blockquote>
8800
8801 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
8802 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
8803 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
8804 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
8805
8806 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
8807 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
8808
8809 <blockquote>
8810 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
8811 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
8812 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
8813 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
8814 </blockquote>
8815
8816 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
8817 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
8818 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
8819 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
8820 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
8821
8822 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
8823 embedding:</p>
8824
8825 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
8826
8827       </div>
8828       <div class="tags">
8829
8830
8831         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
8832
8833
8834       </div>
8835     </div>
8836     <div class="padding"></div>
8837
8838     <div class="entry">
8839       <div class="title">
8840         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
8841       </div>
8842       <div class="date">
8843          8th March 2013
8844       </div>
8845       <div class="body">
8846         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
8847 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
8848 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
8849 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
8850 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
8851 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
8852 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
8853
8854 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
8855
8856 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
8857 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
8858
8859 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
8860 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
8861 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
8862 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
8863 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
8864 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
8865
8866 <p>Images are available for download at
8867 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
8868
8869 <p>md5sums:
8870 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8871 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8872 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8873
8874 <p>sha1sums:
8875 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8876 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8877 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8878
8879 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
8880
8881 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
8882 2013-03-03:</p>
8883
8884 <ul>
8885   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
8886   <ul>
8887         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
8888         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
8889   </ul></li>
8890   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
8891   <ul>
8892         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
8893         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
8894   </ul></li>
8895   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
8896      <ul>
8897         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
8898         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
8899         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
8900                 Closes: #664596</li>
8901         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
8902                 Closes: #664976</li>
8903         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
8904            <ul>
8905                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
8906                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
8907            </ul></li>
8908         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
8909            <ul>
8910                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
8911                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
8912                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
8913                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
8914                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
8915            </ul></li>
8916         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
8917     </ul>
8918   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
8919     <ul>
8920         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
8921     </ul></li>
8922 </ul>
8923
8924 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
8925 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
8926 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
8927 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
8928
8929 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
8930 mailinglist
8931 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
8932 </p></blockquote>
8933
8934 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
8935
8936       </div>
8937       <div class="tags">
8938
8939
8940         Tags: <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>.
8941
8942
8943       </div>
8944     </div>
8945     <div class="padding"></div>
8946
8947     <div class="entry">
8948       <div class="title">
8949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
8950       </div>
8951       <div class="date">
8952          3rd March 2013
8953       </div>
8954       <div class="body">
8955         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
8956 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
8957 support using
8958 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
8959 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
8960 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
8961 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
8962 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
8963 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
8964 using the GNU LGPL, and
8965 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
8966
8967 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
8968 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
8969 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
8970 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
8971 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
8972 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
8973
8974 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
8975 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
8976 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
8977 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
8978 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
8979 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
8980 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
8981 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
8982 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
8983 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
8984 signal distribution is handled using
8985 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
8986 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
8987 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
8988 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
8989 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
8990 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
8991 them up a bit more first.</p>
8992
8993 <p>The development is coordinated on the
8994 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
8995 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
8996 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
8997 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
8998 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
8999 development.</p>
9000
9001       </div>
9002       <div class="tags">
9003
9004
9005         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9006
9007
9008       </div>
9009     </div>
9010     <div class="padding"></div>
9011
9012     <div class="entry">
9013       <div class="title">
9014         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
9015       </div>
9016       <div class="date">
9017         27th February 2013
9018       </div>
9019       <div class="body">
9020         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
9021 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
9022 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
9023 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
9024 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
9025 (where I am the chair of the board) and
9026 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
9027 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
9028 GNU», with this description:
9029
9030 <p><blockquote>
9031 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
9032 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
9033 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
9034 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
9035 </blockquote></p>
9036
9037 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
9038 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
9039 am really curious how many will show up.  See
9040 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
9041 page</a> for the location details.</p>
9042
9043       </div>
9044       <div class="tags">
9045
9046
9047         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9048
9049
9050       </div>
9051     </div>
9052     <div class="padding"></div>
9053
9054     <div class="entry">
9055       <div class="title">
9056         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
9057       </div>
9058       <div class="date">
9059         15th February 2013
9060       </div>
9061       <div class="body">
9062         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
9063 now a great source of free maps available from
9064 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
9065 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
9066 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
9067 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
9068 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
9069 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
9070 page for descriptions).</p>
9071
9072 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
9073 map you can just edit the
9074 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
9075 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
9076
9077       </div>
9078       <div class="tags">
9079
9080
9081         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
9082
9083
9084       </div>
9085     </div>
9086     <div class="padding"></div>
9087
9088     <div class="entry">
9089       <div class="title">
9090         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
9091       </div>
9092       <div class="date">
9093         12th February 2013
9094       </div>
9095       <div class="body">
9096         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
9097 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
9098 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
9099 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
9100 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
9101 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
9102 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
9103 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
9104 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
9105 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
9106 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
9107 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
9108 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
9109 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
9110 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
9111 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
9112
9113 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
9114 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
9115 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
9116 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
9117 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
9118 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
9119 fields:</p>
9120
9121 <p><pre>
9122 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9123 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9124 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
9125 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9126 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9127 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9128 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9129 </pre></p>
9130
9131 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
9132 answer regarding
9133 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
9134 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
9135 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
9136 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
9137
9138 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
9139
9140 <p><pre>
9141 BEGIN:VCARD
9142 VERSION:2.1
9143 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
9144 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
9145 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
9146 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
9147 REV:20130212T095000Z
9148 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9149 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9150 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9151 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9152 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9153 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9154 END:VCARD
9155 </pre></p>
9156
9157 <p>The resulting QR code created using
9158 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
9159 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
9160 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
9161 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
9162 system.</p>
9163
9164 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
9165
9166 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
9167 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
9168 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
9169 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
9170
9171 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
9172 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
9173
9174       </div>
9175       <div class="tags">
9176
9177
9178         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9179
9180
9181       </div>
9182     </div>
9183     <div class="padding"></div>
9184
9185     <div class="entry">
9186       <div class="title">
9187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
9188       </div>
9189       <div class="date">
9190         10th February 2013
9191       </div>
9192       <div class="body">
9193         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
9194
9195 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
9196 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
9197 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
9198 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
9199 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
9200 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
9201 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
9202 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
9203 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
9204 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
9205 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
9206
9207 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
9208 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
9209 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
9210 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
9211 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
9212 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
9213 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
9214 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
9215 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
9216 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
9217 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
9218 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
9219 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
9220 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
9221 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
9222 ones own
9223 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
9224 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
9225 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
9226 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
9227 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
9228 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
9229 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
9230 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
9231 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
9232 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
9233 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
9234
9235 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
9236 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
9237 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
9238 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
9239 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
9240 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
9241
9242 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
9243 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
9244 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
9245
9246       </div>
9247       <div class="tags">
9248
9249
9250         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9251
9252
9253       </div>
9254     </div>
9255     <div class="padding"></div>
9256
9257     <div class="entry">
9258       <div class="title">
9259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
9260       </div>
9261       <div class="date">
9262          2nd February 2013
9263       </div>
9264       <div class="body">
9265         <p>My
9266 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
9267 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
9268 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
9269 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
9270 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
9271 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
9272 version too.</p>
9273
9274 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
9275 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
9276 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
9277 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
9278 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
9279 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
9280 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
9281 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
9282
9283 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
9284 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
9285 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
9286 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
9287 it. :)</p>
9288
9289 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9290 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9291 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9292
9293       </div>
9294       <div class="tags">
9295
9296
9297         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9298
9299
9300       </div>
9301     </div>
9302     <div class="padding"></div>
9303
9304     <div class="entry">
9305       <div class="title">
9306         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
9307       </div>
9308       <div class="date">
9309         22nd January 2013
9310       </div>
9311       <div class="body">
9312         <p>Yesterday, I
9313 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
9314 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
9315 pluggable hardware devices, which I
9316 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
9317 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
9318 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
9319 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
9320 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
9321 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
9322 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
9323 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
9324 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
9325 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
9326
9327 <pre>
9328 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
9329 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
9330 </pre>
9331
9332 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
9333 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
9334 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
9335 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
9336
9337 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
9338 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
9339 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
9340 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
9341 word.</p>
9342
9343 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
9344 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
9345 process.</p>
9346
9347 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
9348 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
9349
9350       </div>
9351       <div class="tags">
9352
9353
9354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9355
9356
9357       </div>
9358     </div>
9359     <div class="padding"></div>
9360
9361     <div class="entry">
9362       <div class="title">
9363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
9364       </div>
9365       <div class="date">
9366         21st January 2013
9367       </div>
9368       <div class="body">
9369         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
9370 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
9371 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
9372 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
9373 it, fetch the
9374 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
9375 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
9376 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
9377 autostart script.</p>
9378
9379 <p>The design is simple:</p>
9380
9381 <ul>
9382
9383 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
9384 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
9385
9386 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
9387 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
9388 initially did.</li>
9389
9390 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
9391 the APT database, a database
9392 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
9393 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
9394
9395 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
9396 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
9397 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
9398 package or packages.</li>
9399
9400 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
9401 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
9402
9403 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
9404 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
9405
9406 </ul>
9407
9408 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
9409 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
9410 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
9411 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
9412
9413 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
9414 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
9415 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
9416 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
9417 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
9418
9419 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
9420 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
9421 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
9422 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
9423 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
9424 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
9425 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
9426 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
9427
9428 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
9429 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
9430 '<tt>svn checkout
9431 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
9432 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
9433 devscripts package.</p>
9434
9435 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
9436 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
9437 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
9438 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
9439 instructions</a> for details.</p>
9440
9441       </div>
9442       <div class="tags">
9443
9444
9445         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9446
9447
9448       </div>
9449     </div>
9450     <div class="padding"></div>
9451
9452     <div class="entry">
9453       <div class="title">
9454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
9455       </div>
9456       <div class="date">
9457         19th January 2013
9458       </div>
9459       <div class="body">
9460         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
9461 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
9462 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
9463 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
9464 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
9465 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
9466 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
9467 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
9468 not a durable solution.
9469
9470 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
9471 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
9472
9473 <ul>
9474
9475 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
9476   than A4).</li>
9477 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
9478 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
9479 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
9480 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
9481 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
9482 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
9483 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
9484 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
9485 size).</li>
9486 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
9487   X.org packages.</li>
9488 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
9489   the time).
9490
9491 </ul>
9492
9493 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
9494 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
9495 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
9496 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
9497 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
9498 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
9499 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
9500 still be useful.</p>
9501
9502 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
9503 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
9504 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
9505 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
9506 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
9507 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
9508
9509       </div>
9510       <div class="tags">
9511
9512
9513         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>.
9514
9515
9516       </div>
9517     </div>
9518     <div class="padding"></div>
9519
9520     <div class="entry">
9521       <div class="title">
9522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
9523       </div>
9524       <div class="date">
9525         18th January 2013
9526       </div>
9527       <div class="body">
9528         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
9529 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
9530 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
9531 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
9532 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
9533 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
9534 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
9535
9536 <pre>
9537 #!/usr/bin/python
9538 import sys
9539 import apt
9540 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
9541     cache = apt.Cache()
9542     cache.open(None)
9543     thepkgs = []
9544     for pkg in cache:
9545         version = pkg.candidate
9546         if version is None:
9547             version = pkg.installed
9548         if version is None:
9549             continue
9550         record = version.record
9551         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
9552             continue
9553         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
9554         for t in mime_types:
9555             t = t.rstrip().strip()
9556             if t == mimetype:
9557                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
9558     return thepkgs
9559 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
9560 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
9561     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
9562 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
9563 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
9564     print "  %s" %pkg
9565 </pre>
9566
9567 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
9568
9569 <pre>
9570 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
9571 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
9572   gecko-mediaplayer
9573 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
9574 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
9575   browser-plugin-gnash
9576 %
9577 </pre>
9578
9579 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
9580 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
9581 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
9582 anyone working on adding it?</p>
9583
9584 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
9585 request for icweasel support for this feature is
9586 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
9587 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
9588 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
9589 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
9590
9591       </div>
9592       <div class="tags">
9593
9594
9595         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>.
9596
9597
9598       </div>
9599     </div>
9600     <div class="padding"></div>
9601
9602     <div class="entry">
9603       <div class="title">
9604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
9605       </div>
9606       <div class="date">
9607         16th January 2013
9608       </div>
9609       <div class="body">
9610         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
9611 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
9612 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
9613 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
9614 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
9615 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
9616 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
9617 downloaded by the browser.</p>
9618
9619 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
9620 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
9621 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
9622 can be found on the
9623 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
9624 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
9625 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
9626 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
9627 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
9628
9629 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
9630
9631 <pre>
9632   count MIME type
9633   ----- -----------------------
9634      32 text/plain
9635      30 audio/mpeg
9636      29 image/png
9637      28 image/jpeg
9638      27 application/ogg
9639      26 audio/x-mp3
9640      25 image/tiff
9641      25 image/gif
9642      22 image/bmp
9643      22 audio/x-wav
9644      20 audio/x-flac
9645      19 audio/x-mpegurl
9646      18 video/x-ms-asf
9647      18 audio/x-musepack
9648      18 audio/x-mpeg
9649      18 application/x-ogg
9650      17 video/mpeg
9651      17 audio/x-scpls
9652      17 audio/ogg
9653      16 video/x-ms-wmv
9654 </pre>
9655
9656 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
9657
9658 <pre>
9659   count MIME type
9660   ----- -----------------------
9661      33 text/plain
9662      32 image/png
9663      32 image/jpeg
9664      29 audio/mpeg
9665      27 image/gif
9666      26 image/tiff
9667      26 application/ogg
9668      25 audio/x-mp3
9669      22 image/bmp
9670      21 audio/x-wav
9671      19 audio/x-mpegurl
9672      19 audio/x-mpeg
9673      18 video/mpeg
9674      18 audio/x-scpls
9675      18 audio/x-flac
9676      18 application/x-ogg
9677      17 video/x-ms-asf
9678      17 text/html
9679      17 audio/x-musepack
9680      16 image/x-xbitmap
9681 </pre>
9682
9683 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
9684
9685 <pre>
9686   count MIME type
9687   ----- -----------------------
9688      31 text/plain
9689      31 image/png
9690      31 image/jpeg
9691      29 audio/mpeg
9692      28 application/ogg
9693      27 image/gif
9694      26 image/tiff
9695      26 audio/x-mp3
9696      23 audio/x-wav
9697      22 image/bmp
9698      21 audio/x-flac
9699      20 audio/x-mpegurl
9700      19 audio/x-mpeg
9701      18 video/x-ms-asf
9702      18 video/mpeg
9703      18 audio/x-scpls
9704      18 application/x-ogg
9705      17 audio/x-musepack
9706      16 video/x-ms-wmv
9707      16 video/x-msvideo
9708 </pre>
9709
9710 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
9711 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
9712 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
9713 issues.</p>
9714
9715 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
9716 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
9717
9718       </div>
9719       <div class="tags">
9720
9721
9722         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>.
9723
9724
9725       </div>
9726     </div>
9727     <div class="padding"></div>
9728
9729     <div class="entry">
9730       <div class="title">
9731         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
9732       </div>
9733       <div class="date">
9734         15th January 2013
9735       </div>
9736       <div class="body">
9737         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
9738 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
9739 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
9740 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
9741 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
9742 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
9743 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
9744 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
9745 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
9746 packages.</p>
9747
9748 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
9749 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
9750 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
9751 modalias.</p>
9752
9753 <p><blockquote>
9754 Package: package-name
9755 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
9756 </blockquote></p>
9757
9758 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
9759 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
9760
9761 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
9762 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
9763
9764 <p><blockquote>
9765 Package: cheese
9766 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
9767 </blockquote></p>
9768
9769 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
9770 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
9771
9772 <p><blockquote>
9773 Package: pcmciautils
9774 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
9775 </blockquote></p>
9776
9777 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
9778 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
9779
9780 <p><blockquote>
9781 Package: colorhug-client
9782 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
9783 </blockquote></p>
9784
9785 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
9786 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
9787 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
9788
9789 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
9790 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
9791 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
9792 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
9793 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
9794 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
9795 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
9796 Raring.</p>
9797
9798 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
9799 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
9800 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
9801 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
9802 try the
9803 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
9804 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
9805 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
9806 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
9807
9808 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
9809 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
9810
9811 <p><blockquote>
9812 % ./hw-support-lookup
9813 <br>yubikey-personalization
9814 <br>%
9815 </blockquote></p>
9816
9817 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
9818 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
9819
9820 <p><blockquote>
9821 % ./hw-support-lookup
9822 <br>pcmciautils
9823 <br>%
9824 </blockquote></p>
9825
9826 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
9827 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
9828 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
9829
9830 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
9831 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
9832 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
9833 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
9834 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
9835 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
9836 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
9837 see if it work.</p>
9838
9839 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9840 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9841 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9842 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9843
9844       </div>
9845       <div class="tags">
9846
9847
9848         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9849
9850
9851       </div>
9852     </div>
9853     <div class="padding"></div>
9854
9855     <div class="entry">
9856       <div class="title">
9857         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
9858       </div>
9859       <div class="date">
9860         14th January 2013
9861       </div>
9862       <div class="body">
9863         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
9864 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
9865 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
9866 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
9867 in
9868 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9869 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
9870
9871 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
9872
9873 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
9874 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
9875 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
9876 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
9877 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
9878 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
9879
9880 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
9881 this shell script:</p>
9882
9883 <pre>
9884 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
9885 </pre>
9886
9887 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
9888 using modinfo:</p>
9889
9890 <pre>
9891 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
9892 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
9893 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
9894 %
9895 </pre>
9896
9897 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
9898
9899 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
9900 Bridge memory controller:</p>
9901
9902 <p><blockquote>
9903 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
9904 </blockquote></p>
9905
9906 <p>This represent these values:</p>
9907
9908 <pre>
9909  v   00008086  (vendor)
9910  d   00002770  (device)
9911  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
9912  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
9913  bc  06        (bus class)
9914  sc  00        (bus subclass)
9915  i   00        (interface)
9916 </pre>
9917
9918 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
9919 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
9920 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
9921 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
9922
9923 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
9924 means.</p>
9925
9926 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
9927
9928 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
9929 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
9930
9931 <p><blockquote>
9932 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
9933 </blockquote></p>
9934
9935 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
9936
9937 <pre>
9938  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
9939  p    0001  (device product)
9940  d    0206  (bcddevice)
9941  dc     09  (device class)
9942  dsc    00  (device subclass)
9943  dp     00  (device protocol)
9944  ic     09  (interface class)
9945  isc    00  (interface subclass)
9946  ip     00  (interface protocol)
9947 </pre>
9948
9949 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
9950 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
9951 these alias entries show up:</p>
9952
9953 <p><blockquote>
9954 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
9955 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
9956 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
9957 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
9958 </blockquote></p>
9959
9960 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
9961 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
9962 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
9963
9964 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
9965
9966 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
9967 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
9968
9969 <p><blockquote>
9970 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9971 </blockquote></p>
9972
9973 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
9974
9975 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
9976
9977 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
9978 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
9979 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
9980
9981 <p><blockquote>
9982 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
9983 </blockquote></p>
9984
9985 <p>The values present are</p>
9986
9987 <pre>
9988  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
9989  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
9990  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
9991  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
9992  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
9993  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
9994  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
9995  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
9996  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
9997  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
9998  ct   10             (chassis type)
9999  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
10000 </pre>
10001
10002 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
10003 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
10004
10005 <pre>
10006   3 Desktop
10007   4 Low Profile Desktop
10008   5 Pizza Box
10009   6 Mini Tower
10010   7 Tower
10011   8 Portable
10012   9 Laptop
10013  10 Notebook
10014  11 Hand Held
10015  12 Docking Station
10016  13 All In One
10017  14 Sub Notebook
10018  15 Space-saving
10019  16 Lunch Box
10020  17 Main Server Chassis
10021  18 Expansion Chassis
10022  19 Sub Chassis
10023  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
10024  21 Peripheral Chassis
10025  22 RAID Chassis
10026  23 Rack Mount Chassis
10027  24 Sealed-case PC
10028  25 Multi-system
10029  26 CompactPCI
10030  27 AdvancedTCA
10031  28 Blade
10032  29 Blade Enclosing
10033 </pre>
10034
10035 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
10036 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
10037 claim it is a desktop.</p>
10038
10039 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
10040
10041 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
10042 test machine:</p>
10043
10044 <p><blockquote>
10045 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
10046 </blockquote></p>
10047
10048 <p>The values present are</p>
10049
10050 <pre>
10051   ty  01  (type)
10052   pr  00  (prototype)
10053   id  00  (id)
10054   ex  00  (extra)
10055 </pre>
10056
10057 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
10058 the valid values are.</p>
10059
10060 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
10061
10062 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
10063 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
10064 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
10065 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
10066 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
10067 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
10068 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
10069
10070 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
10071
10072 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
10073 one can use the following shell script:</p>
10074
10075 <pre>
10076   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
10077     echo "$id" ; \
10078     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
10079   done
10080 </pre>
10081
10082 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
10083 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
10084
10085 <pre>
10086   acpi:ACPI0003:
10087     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
10088   acpi:device:
10089   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
10090   acpi:IBM0068:
10091     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
10092     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
10093     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
10094     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
10095   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10096     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
10097     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
10098     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
10099   [...]
10100 </pre>
10101
10102 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10103 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10104 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10105 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10106
10107 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
10108 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
10109 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
10110
10111       </div>
10112       <div class="tags">
10113
10114
10115         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10116
10117
10118       </div>
10119     </div>
10120     <div class="padding"></div>
10121
10122     <div class="entry">
10123       <div class="title">
10124         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
10125       </div>
10126       <div class="date">
10127         10th January 2013
10128       </div>
10129       <div class="body">
10130         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
10131 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
10132 Launcher and updated the Debian package
10133 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
10134 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
10135 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
10136 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
10137 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
10138 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
10139 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
10140 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
10141 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
10142 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
10143 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
10144 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
10145 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
10146 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
10147 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
10148
10149       </div>
10150       <div class="tags">
10151
10152
10153         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
10154
10155
10156       </div>
10157     </div>
10158     <div class="padding"></div>
10159
10160     <div class="entry">
10161       <div class="title">
10162         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
10163       </div>
10164       <div class="date">
10165          9th January 2013
10166       </div>
10167       <div class="body">
10168         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
10169 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
10170 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
10171 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
10172 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
10173 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
10174 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
10175 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
10176 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
10177 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
10178 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
10179
10180 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
10181 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
10182 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
10183 simple:
10184
10185 <ul>
10186
10187 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
10188   starting when a user log in.</li>
10189
10190 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
10191   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
10192
10193 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
10194   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
10195   packages.</li>
10196
10197 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
10198   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
10199
10200 </ul>
10201
10202 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
10203 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
10204 discover database to find packages and
10205 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
10206 packages.</p>
10207
10208 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
10209 draft package is now checked into
10210 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10211 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
10212 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
10213 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
10214 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
10215 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
10216 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
10217 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
10218 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
10219 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
10220 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
10221 because of the freeze).</p>
10222
10223 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
10224 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
10225 inserted):</p>
10226
10227 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
10228
10229 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
10230 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
10231 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
10232
10233 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
10234 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
10235 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
10236 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
10237 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
10238 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
10239 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
10240
10241 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
10242 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
10243 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
10244 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
10245 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
10246 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
10247 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
10248 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
10249 not be installed?</p>
10250
10251 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
10252 please send me an email. :)</p>
10253
10254       </div>
10255       <div class="tags">
10256
10257
10258         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10259
10260
10261       </div>
10262     </div>
10263     <div class="padding"></div>
10264
10265     <div class="entry">
10266       <div class="title">
10267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
10268       </div>
10269       <div class="date">
10270          2nd January 2013
10271       </div>
10272       <div class="body">
10273         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
10274 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
10275 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
10276 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
10277 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
10278 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
10279 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
10280 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
10281 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
10282 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
10283
10284 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
10285 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
10286 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
10287
10288       </div>
10289       <div class="tags">
10290
10291
10292         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
10293
10294
10295       </div>
10296     </div>
10297     <div class="padding"></div>
10298
10299     <div class="entry">
10300       <div class="title">
10301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
10302       </div>
10303       <div class="date">
10304         28th December 2012
10305       </div>
10306       <div class="body">
10307         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
10308 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
10309 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
10310 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
10311 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
10312 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
10313 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
10314 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
10315 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
10316 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
10317 followed by many others. :)</p>
10318
10319 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
10320 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
10321 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
10322 you want to donate to the project.</p>
10323
10324       </div>
10325       <div class="tags">
10326
10327
10328         Tags: <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>.
10329
10330
10331       </div>
10332     </div>
10333     <div class="padding"></div>
10334
10335     <div class="entry">
10336       <div class="title">
10337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
10338       </div>
10339       <div class="date">
10340         25th December 2012
10341       </div>
10342       <div class="body">
10343         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
10344 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
10345
10346 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
10347 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
10348 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
10349 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
10350 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
10351 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
10352 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
10353 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
10354 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
10355 name.</p>
10356
10357 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
10358 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
10359 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
10360
10361 <blockquote><pre>
10362 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
10363 cd bitcoin
10364 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
10365 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
10366 </pre></blockquote>
10367
10368 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
10369 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
10370 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
10371 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
10372 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
10373 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
10374 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
10375 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
10376 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
10377
10378 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10379 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10380 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10381
10382       </div>
10383       <div class="tags">
10384
10385
10386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10387
10388
10389       </div>
10390     </div>
10391     <div class="padding"></div>
10392
10393     <div class="entry">
10394       <div class="title">
10395         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
10396       </div>
10397       <div class="date">
10398         21st December 2012
10399       </div>
10400       <div class="body">
10401         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
10402 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
10403 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
10404 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
10405 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
10406 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
10407 is now maintained by a
10408 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
10409 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
10410 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
10411 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
10412 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
10413 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
10414 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
10415 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
10416 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
10417 Corallo in a
10418 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
10419 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
10420 Debian package.</p>
10421
10422 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
10423 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
10424 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
10425 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
10426 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
10427 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
10428 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
10429 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
10430 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
10431 new version to unstable.
10432
10433 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
10434 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
10435 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
10436 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
10437 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
10438 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
10439 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
10440 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
10441 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
10442 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
10443 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
10444 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
10445 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
10446 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
10447 have not tested them.</p>
10448
10449 <p>My
10450 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
10451 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
10452 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
10453 years ago, as can be
10454 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
10455 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
10456 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
10457 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
10458 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
10459 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
10460 the same address as last time,
10461 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10462
10463       </div>
10464       <div class="tags">
10465
10466
10467         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10468
10469
10470       </div>
10471     </div>
10472     <div class="padding"></div>
10473
10474     <div class="entry">
10475       <div class="title">
10476         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
10477       </div>
10478       <div class="date">
10479         18th December 2012
10480       </div>
10481       <div class="body">
10482         <p>A few days ago I came across
10483 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
10484 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
10485 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
10486 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
10487 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
10488 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
10489 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
10490 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
10491 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
10492
10493 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
10494 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
10495 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
10496 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
10497
10498 <blockquote><pre>
10499 2004-05-27 Book Store
10500       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
10501       Liabilities:Visa
10502 </pre></blockquote>
10503
10504 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
10505 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
10506 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
10507 Spang</a>,
10508 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
10509 Keen</a>,
10510 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
10511 Cantino</a> and
10512 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
10513 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
10514 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
10515 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
10516 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
10517
10518 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
10519 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
10520 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
10521 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
10522 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
10523
10524 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
10525 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
10526 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
10527 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
10528 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
10529 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
10530 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
10531 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
10532 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
10533
10534       </div>
10535       <div class="tags">
10536
10537
10538         Tags: <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>.
10539
10540
10541       </div>
10542     </div>
10543     <div class="padding"></div>
10544
10545     <div class="entry">
10546       <div class="title">
10547         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
10548       </div>
10549       <div class="date">
10550          6th December 2012
10551       </div>
10552       <div class="body">
10553         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
10554 Oslo</a>, we use the
10555 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
10556 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
10557 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
10558 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
10559 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
10560 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
10561 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
10562 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
10563 Python.</p>
10564
10565 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
10566 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
10567 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
10568 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
10569 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
10570 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
10571
10572 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
10573 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
10574 user currently logged in:</p>
10575
10576 <blockquote><pre>
10577 #!/usr/bin/env python
10578 import getpass
10579 import xmlrpclib
10580 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
10581 username = getpass.getuser()
10582 password = getpass.getpass()
10583 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
10584 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
10585 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
10586 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
10587 result = server.logout(sessionid)
10588 print result
10589 </pre></blockquote>
10590
10591 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
10592 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
10593
10594       </div>
10595       <div class="tags">
10596
10597
10598         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
10599
10600
10601       </div>
10602     </div>
10603     <div class="padding"></div>
10604
10605     <div class="entry">
10606       <div class="title">
10607         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
10608       </div>
10609       <div class="date">
10610         17th November 2012
10611       </div>
10612       <div class="body">
10613         <p>While working on a
10614 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
10615 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
10616 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
10617 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
10618 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
10619 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
10620
10621 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
10622 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
10623 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
10624 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
10625 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
10626 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
10627 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
10628 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
10629 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
10630 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
10631 arguments.</p>
10632
10633 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
10634 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
10635 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
10636 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
10637 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
10638 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
10639 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
10640 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
10641
10642 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
10643 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
10644 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
10645 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
10646 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
10647 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
10648 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
10649 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
10650 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
10651 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
10652 correct right holder.</p>
10653
10654 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
10655 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
10656 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
10657 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
10658 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
10659 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
10660 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
10661 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
10662 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
10663 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
10664 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
10665 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
10666 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
10667 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
10668
10669 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
10670 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
10671 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
10672
10673 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
10674 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
10675
10676       </div>
10677       <div class="tags">
10678
10679
10680         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10681
10682
10683       </div>
10684     </div>
10685     <div class="padding"></div>
10686
10687     <div class="entry">
10688       <div class="title">
10689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
10690       </div>
10691       <div class="date">
10692         14th November 2012
10693       </div>
10694       <div class="body">
10695         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
10696 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10697 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
10698 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
10699 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
10700 the people behind the German
10701 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
10702 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
10703 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
10704
10705 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10706
10707 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
10708 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
10709 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
10710
10711 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
10712 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
10713 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
10714 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
10715 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
10716 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
10717
10718 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
10719 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
10720 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
10721 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
10722 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
10723 relationship management and the communication processes in the
10724 project.</p>
10725
10726 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
10727 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
10728 and a yoga teacher.</p>
10729
10730 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
10731 project?</strong></p>
10732
10733 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
10734
10735 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
10736 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
10737 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
10738 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
10739 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
10740 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
10741 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
10742 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
10743 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
10744 parents.</p>
10745
10746 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
10747 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
10748 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
10749 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
10750 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
10751 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
10752 Germany.</p>
10753
10754 <p>For information about our school project you can read
10755 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
10756 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
10757
10758 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10759 Edu?</strong></p>
10760
10761 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
10762 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
10763
10764 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
10765 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
10766 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
10767 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
10768 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
10769 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
10770 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
10771 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
10772 teachers, parents...</p>
10773
10774 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10775 Edu?</strong></p>
10776
10777 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
10778 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
10779
10780 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
10781 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
10782 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
10783 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
10784 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
10785
10786 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
10787 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
10788 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
10789 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
10790 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
10791 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
10792 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
10793
10794 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10795
10796 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
10797 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
10798 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
10799 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
10800
10801 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10802 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10803
10804 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
10805 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
10806 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
10807 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
10808 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
10809
10810 <ul>
10811
10812 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
10813 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
10814 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
10815
10816 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
10817 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
10818 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
10819 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
10820 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
10821 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
10822 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
10823
10824 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
10825 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
10826 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
10827 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
10828
10829 </ul>
10830
10831       </div>
10832       <div class="tags">
10833
10834
10835         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
10836
10837
10838       </div>
10839     </div>
10840     <div class="padding"></div>
10841
10842     <div class="entry">
10843       <div class="title">
10844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
10845       </div>
10846       <div class="date">
10847          4th November 2012
10848       </div>
10849       <div class="body">
10850         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
10851 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
10852 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
10853 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
10854 see how a member of the bitcoin community
10855 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
10856 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
10857 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
10858 competition.  My thoughts go to the
10859 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
10860 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
10861 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
10862 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
10863 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
10864
10865 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
10866 that the community already seem to have
10867 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
10868 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
10869 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
10870 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
10871 wealth is available.</p>
10872
10873       </div>
10874       <div class="tags">
10875
10876
10877         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10878
10879
10880       </div>
10881     </div>
10882     <div class="padding"></div>
10883
10884     <div class="entry">
10885       <div class="title">
10886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
10887       </div>
10888       <div class="date">
10889         26th October 2012
10890       </div>
10891       <div class="body">
10892         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
10893 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
10894 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
10895 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
10896 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
10897 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
10898 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
10899 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
10900 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
10901 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
10902 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
10903 it every time.</p>
10904
10905 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
10906 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
10907 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
10908 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
10909 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
10910 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
10911 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
10912 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
10913 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
10914 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
10915 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
10916 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
10917
10918 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
10919 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
10920 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
10921 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
10922 article: First the unplanned outage:
10923
10924 <blockquote><pre>
10925 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
10926 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
10927 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
10928 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
10929 Duration:    40 minutes
10930 Scope:       Exchange 2003
10931 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
10932              a cluster failover.
10933
10934 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
10935              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
10936 Technician:  [xxx]
10937 </pre></blockquote>
10938
10939 Next the planned outage:
10940
10941 <blockquote><pre>
10942 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
10943 Severity:    Major (Planned)
10944 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
10945 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
10946 Duration:    10 hours
10947 Scope:       H2 Transport
10948 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
10949              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
10950              4510s.
10951 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
10952              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
10953              connectivity.
10954 Technician:  [xxx]
10955 </pre></blockquote>
10956
10957 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
10958 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
10959 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
10960 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
10961 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
10962 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
10963 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
10964
10965 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
10966 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
10967 university too.  We do register
10968 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
10969 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
10970 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
10971 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
10972 for other sites to consider too?</p>
10973
10974       </div>
10975       <div class="tags">
10976
10977
10978         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
10979
10980
10981       </div>
10982     </div>
10983     <div class="padding"></div>
10984
10985     <div class="entry">
10986       <div class="title">
10987         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
10988       </div>
10989       <div class="date">
10990         22nd October 2012
10991       </div>
10992       <div class="body">
10993         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
10994 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
10995 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
10996 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
10997 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
10998 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
10999 background information is available in Norwegian from
11000 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
11001 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
11002 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
11003 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
11004 willing to
11005 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
11006 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
11007 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
11008 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
11009 sounded like
11010 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
11011 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
11012 later.</p>
11013
11014 <p>And thought this action is
11015 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
11016 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
11017 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
11018 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
11019 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
11020 rights.</p>
11021
11022 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
11023 unacceptable terms.  For example
11024 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
11025 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
11026 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
11027 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
11028 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
11029
11030 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
11031 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
11032 restored the account of the user, as reported by
11033 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
11034 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
11035 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
11036 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
11037 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
11038 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
11039 reading two opinions from
11040 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
11041 Phipps</a> and
11042 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
11043 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
11044 details about the original story.</p>
11045
11046       </div>
11047       <div class="tags">
11048
11049
11050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
11051
11052
11053       </div>
11054     </div>
11055     <div class="padding"></div>
11056
11057     <div class="entry">
11058       <div class="title">
11059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
11060       </div>
11061       <div class="date">
11062         18th October 2012
11063       </div>
11064       <div class="body">
11065         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
11066 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
11067 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
11068 across a marvellous drawing by
11069 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
11070 visualising some of what is going on.
11071
11072 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
11073 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
11074
11075 <blockquote>
11076 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
11077 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
11078 </blockquote>
11079
11080 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
11081 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
11082 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
11083 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
11084 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
11085 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
11086
11087       </div>
11088       <div class="tags">
11089
11090
11091         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
11092
11093
11094       </div>
11095     </div>
11096     <div class="padding"></div>
11097
11098     <div class="entry">
11099       <div class="title">
11100         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
11101       </div>
11102       <div class="date">
11103         12th October 2012
11104       </div>
11105       <div class="body">
11106         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
11107 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
11108 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
11109 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
11110 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
11111 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
11112 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
11113 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
11114 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
11115 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
11116 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
11117 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
11118 matter".</p>
11119
11120 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
11121 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
11122 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
11123 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
11124 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
11125 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
11126 to argue its side.</p>
11127
11128 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
11129 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
11130 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
11131 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
11132
11133 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
11134 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
11135 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
11136
11137       </div>
11138       <div class="tags">
11139
11140
11141         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
11142
11143
11144       </div>
11145     </div>
11146     <div class="padding"></div>
11147
11148     <div class="entry">
11149       <div class="title">
11150         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
11151       </div>
11152       <div class="date">
11153          3rd October 2012
11154       </div>
11155       <div class="body">
11156         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
11157 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
11158 the computer science book collection available in his local
11159 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
11160 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
11161 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
11162 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
11163 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
11164 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
11165 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
11166 recently published books.</p>
11167
11168 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
11169 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
11170 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
11171 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
11172 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
11173 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
11174 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
11175 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
11176 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
11177 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
11178 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
11179 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
11180 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
11181 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
11182 for the library that evening.</p>
11183
11184 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
11185 going to know that for example
11186 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
11187 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
11188 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
11189 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
11190 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
11191 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
11192 book right away.</p>
11193
11194       </div>
11195       <div class="tags">
11196
11197
11198         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11199
11200
11201       </div>
11202     </div>
11203     <div class="padding"></div>
11204
11205     <div class="entry">
11206       <div class="title">
11207         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
11208       </div>
11209       <div class="date">
11210         23rd September 2012
11211       </div>
11212       <div class="body">
11213         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
11214 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
11215 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
11216 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
11217 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
11218 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
11219
11220 When I started, I
11221 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
11222 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
11223 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
11224 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
11225 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
11226 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
11227 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
11228
11229 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
11230
11231 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
11232 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
11233 the project files currently available from
11234 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11235
11236 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
11237 the updated
11238 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
11239 and
11240 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
11241 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
11242 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
11243 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
11244
11245       </div>
11246       <div class="tags">
11247
11248
11249         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
11250
11251
11252       </div>
11253     </div>
11254     <div class="padding"></div>
11255
11256     <div class="entry">
11257       <div class="title">
11258         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
11259       </div>
11260       <div class="date">
11261         17th September 2012
11262       </div>
11263       <div class="body">
11264         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
11265 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11266 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
11267 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
11268 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
11269 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
11270 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
11271
11272 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11273
11274 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
11275 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
11276 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
11277 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
11278 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
11279 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
11280 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
11281 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
11282 training is anyway very important</p>
11283
11284 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
11285 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
11286 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
11287 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
11288 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
11289
11290 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11291 project?</strong></p>
11292
11293 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
11294 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
11295 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
11296 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
11297 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
11298 hole.</p>
11299
11300 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11301 Edu?</strong></p>
11302
11303 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
11304 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
11305 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
11306 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
11307 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
11308 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
11309 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
11310 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
11311 hassle.</p>
11312
11313 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11314 Edu?</strong></p>
11315
11316 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
11317 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
11318 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
11319 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
11320 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
11321 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
11322 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
11323 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
11324
11325 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11326
11327 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
11328 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
11329 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
11330 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
11331 has the same...</p>
11332
11333 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
11334 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
11335 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
11336 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
11337
11338 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11339 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11340
11341 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
11342 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
11343 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
11344
11345 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
11346 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
11347 don't.</p>
11348
11349 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
11350 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
11351 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
11352 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
11353 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
11354 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
11355 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
11356
11357       </div>
11358       <div class="tags">
11359
11360
11361         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
11362
11363
11364       </div>
11365     </div>
11366     <div class="padding"></div>
11367
11368     <div class="entry">
11369       <div class="title">
11370         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
11371       </div>
11372       <div class="date">
11373         15th September 2012
11374       </div>
11375       <div class="body">
11376         <p>After the
11377 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
11378 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
11379 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
11380 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
11381 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
11382 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
11383 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
11384 was
11385 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
11386 formal working group should be formed.</p>
11387
11388 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
11389 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
11390 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
11391 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
11392 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
11393 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
11394 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
11395 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
11396
11397 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
11398 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
11399 IETF.</p>
11400
11401       </div>
11402       <div class="tags">
11403
11404
11405         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11406
11407
11408       </div>
11409     </div>
11410     <div class="padding"></div>
11411
11412     <div class="entry">
11413       <div class="title">
11414         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
11415       </div>
11416       <div class="date">
11417         12th September 2012
11418       </div>
11419       <div class="body">
11420         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
11421 publication of of
11422 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
11423 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
11424 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
11425 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
11426 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
11427 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
11428 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
11429 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
11430 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
11431 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
11432
11433 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
11434 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
11435 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
11436 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
11437
11438 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
11439 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
11440
11441       </div>
11442       <div class="tags">
11443
11444
11445         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11446
11447
11448       </div>
11449     </div>
11450     <div class="padding"></div>
11451
11452     <div class="entry">
11453       <div class="title">
11454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
11455       </div>
11456       <div class="date">
11457          7th September 2012
11458       </div>
11459       <div class="body">
11460         <p>As I
11461 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
11462 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
11463 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
11464 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
11465 repository for the project</a>.</p>
11466
11467 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
11468 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
11469 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
11470 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
11471
11472 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
11473 PostScript formats at
11474 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
11475 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
11476
11477       </div>
11478       <div class="tags">
11479
11480
11481         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
11482
11483
11484       </div>
11485     </div>
11486     <div class="padding"></div>
11487
11488     <div class="entry">
11489       <div class="title">
11490         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
11491       </div>
11492       <div class="date">
11493         23rd August 2012
11494       </div>
11495       <div class="body">
11496         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
11497 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
11498 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
11499 revisit the great site
11500 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
11501 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
11502 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
11503
11504       </div>
11505       <div class="tags">
11506
11507
11508         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11509
11510
11511       </div>
11512     </div>
11513     <div class="padding"></div>
11514
11515     <div class="entry">
11516       <div class="title">
11517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
11518       </div>
11519       <div class="date">
11520         17th August 2012
11521       </div>
11522       <div class="body">
11523         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
11524 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
11525 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
11526 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
11527 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
11528 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
11529 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
11530 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
11531 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
11532 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
11533 summer I
11534 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
11535 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
11536 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
11537
11538 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
11539 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
11540 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
11541 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
11542 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
11543 progress:</p>
11544
11545 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
11546
11547 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
11548 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
11549 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
11550 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
11551 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
11552 english version of the docbook source.</p>
11553
11554 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
11555 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
11556 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
11557 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
11558 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
11559 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
11560 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
11561 project files currently available from <a
11562 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11563
11564 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
11565 the updated
11566 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
11567 and
11568 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
11569 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
11570 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
11571 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
11572
11573       </div>
11574       <div class="tags">
11575
11576
11577         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
11578
11579
11580       </div>
11581     </div>
11582     <div class="padding"></div>
11583
11584     <div class="entry">
11585       <div class="title">
11586         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
11587       </div>
11588       <div class="date">
11589         10th August 2012
11590       </div>
11591       <div class="body">
11592         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
11593 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
11594 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
11595 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
11596 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
11597 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
11598 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
11599 case for the language
11600 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
11601 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
11602
11603 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
11604 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
11605 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
11606 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
11607 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
11608
11609 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
11610 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
11611 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
11612 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
11613 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
11614 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
11615 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
11616 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
11617 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
11618 alias for 'nb'.</p>
11619
11620 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
11621 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
11622 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
11623 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
11624 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
11625 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
11626 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
11627 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
11628 at the same time. :(</p>
11629
11630 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
11631 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
11632 processors. :(</p>
11633
11634 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
11635
11636       </div>
11637       <div class="tags">
11638
11639
11640         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
11641
11642
11643       </div>
11644     </div>
11645     <div class="padding"></div>
11646
11647     <div class="entry">
11648       <div class="title">
11649         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
11650       </div>
11651       <div class="date">
11652         31st July 2012
11653       </div>
11654       <div class="body">
11655         <p>I tried to send this text to the
11656 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
11657 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
11658 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
11659 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
11660 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
11661 out.</p>
11662
11663 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
11664 learning curve at the moment.</p>
11665
11666 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
11667 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
11668 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
11669 available from
11670 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
11671 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
11672 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
11673 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
11674 Squeeze.</p>
11675
11676 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
11677 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
11678 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
11679 problems.</p>
11680
11681 <ul>
11682
11683 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
11684    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
11685    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
11686    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
11687    index references spanning several pages (See
11688    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
11689    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
11690    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
11691
11692 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
11693    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
11694    #683163</a>).</li>
11695
11696 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
11697    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
11698    footnote and text body, see
11699    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
11700    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
11701    refs listed are not right).</li>
11702
11703 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
11704
11705 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
11706    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
11707
11708 </ul>
11709
11710 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
11711 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
11712 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
11713
11714 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
11715
11716       </div>
11717       <div class="tags">
11718
11719
11720         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
11721
11722
11723       </div>
11724     </div>
11725     <div class="padding"></div>
11726
11727     <div class="entry">
11728       <div class="title">
11729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
11730       </div>
11731       <div class="date">
11732         21st July 2012
11733       </div>
11734       <div class="body">
11735         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
11736 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
11737 norwegian version</a> of the book
11738 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
11739 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
11740 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
11741 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
11742 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11743
11744 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
11745 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
11746 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
11747 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
11748 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
11749 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
11750 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
11751 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
11752 print. :)</p>
11753
11754 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
11755 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
11756 language.</p>
11757
11758       </div>
11759       <div class="tags">
11760
11761
11762         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
11763
11764
11765       </div>
11766     </div>
11767     <div class="padding"></div>
11768
11769     <div class="entry">
11770       <div class="title">
11771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
11772       </div>
11773       <div class="date">
11774         16th July 2012
11775       </div>
11776       <div class="body">
11777         <p>I am currently working on a
11778 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
11779 to translate</a> the book
11780 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
11781 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
11782 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
11783 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
11784 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
11785 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
11786 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11787
11788 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
11789 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
11790 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
11791 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
11792 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
11793 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
11794 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
11795 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
11796 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
11797
11798       </div>
11799       <div class="tags">
11800
11801
11802         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
11803
11804
11805       </div>
11806     </div>
11807     <div class="padding"></div>
11808
11809     <div class="entry">
11810       <div class="title">
11811         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
11812       </div>
11813       <div class="date">
11814          9th July 2012
11815       </div>
11816       <div class="body">
11817         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11818 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
11819 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
11820 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
11821 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
11822 to adjust and scale the just released
11823 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11824 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
11825 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
11826
11827 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11828
11829 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
11830 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
11831 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
11832 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
11833 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
11834 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
11835 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
11836 perspective when working with IT.</p>
11837
11838 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11839 project?</strong></p>
11840
11841 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
11842 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
11843 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
11844 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
11845 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
11846 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
11847
11848 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11849 Edu?</strong></p>
11850
11851 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
11852 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
11853 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
11854 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
11855 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
11856 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
11857 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
11858 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
11859 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
11860 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
11861 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
11862 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
11863 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
11864 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
11865 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
11866 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
11867 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
11868 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
11869 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
11870 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
11871 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
11872 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
11873 quicker to update.
11874
11875 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11876 Edu?</strong></p>
11877
11878 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
11879 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
11880 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
11881 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
11882 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
11883 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
11884
11885 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
11886 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
11887 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
11888 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
11889 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
11890 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
11891 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
11892 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
11893 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
11894 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
11895 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
11896 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
11897 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
11898 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
11899 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
11900
11901 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
11902 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
11903 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
11904 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
11905 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
11906 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
11907 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
11908 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
11909
11910 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
11911 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
11912 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
11913 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
11914 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
11915 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
11916 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
11917 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
11918 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
11919 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
11920 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
11921 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
11922 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
11923 sound file.</p>
11924
11925 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
11926 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
11927 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
11928 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
11929 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
11930 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
11931 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
11932 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
11933 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
11934
11935 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11936
11937 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
11938 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
11939 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
11940 )</p>
11941
11942 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11943 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11944
11945 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
11946 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
11947 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
11948 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
11949 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
11950 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
11951 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
11952 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
11953 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
11954 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
11955 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
11956 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
11957 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
11958 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
11959 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
11960
11961 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
11962 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
11963 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
11964 management with Airtime</a>,
11965 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
11966 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
11967 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
11968 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
11969 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
11970
11971       </div>
11972       <div class="tags">
11973
11974
11975         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
11976
11977
11978       </div>
11979     </div>
11980     <div class="padding"></div>
11981
11982     <div class="entry">
11983       <div class="title">
11984         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
11985       </div>
11986       <div class="date">
11987          8th July 2012
11988       </div>
11989       <div class="body">
11990         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
11991 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
11992 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
11993 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
11994 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
11995 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
11996 Steinberg in his blog post
11997 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
11998 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
11999 spending of your tax money.</p>
12000
12001 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
12002 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
12003 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
12004 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
12005 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
12006 purchases.</p>
12007
12008       </div>
12009       <div class="tags">
12010
12011
12012         Tags: <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>.
12013
12014
12015       </div>
12016     </div>
12017     <div class="padding"></div>
12018
12019     <div class="entry">
12020       <div class="title">
12021         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
12022       </div>
12023       <div class="date">
12024          7th July 2012
12025       </div>
12026       <div class="body">
12027         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12028 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
12029 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
12030 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
12031 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
12032 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
12033 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
12034 receive.  The software is
12035
12036 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
12037 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
12038 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
12039 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
12040 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
12041 Windows</a>.</p>
12042
12043 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
12044 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
12045
12046 <p><ul>
12047
12048   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
12049     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
12050
12051   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
12052     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
12053     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
12054     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
12055     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
12056     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
12057     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
12058     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
12059     </li>
12060
12061   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
12062     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
12063
12064   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
12065     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
12066
12067   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
12068     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
12069
12070   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
12071
12072   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
12073     formats </li>
12074
12075   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
12076     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
12077     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
12078     (as separate sets)</li>
12079
12080   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
12081     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
12082     percentage)</li>
12083
12084   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
12085     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
12086     memory):
12087     <ul>
12088       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
12089       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
12090       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
12091       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
12092       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
12093       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
12094       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
12095       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
12096       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
12097       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
12098           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
12099           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
12100           activity)</li>
12101       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
12102       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
12103     </ul></li>
12104
12105   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
12106     <ul>
12107       <li>Break periods</li>
12108       <li>For teacher(s):
12109         <ul>
12110           <li>Not available periods</li>
12111           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
12112           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12113           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12114           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12115           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12116
12117           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12118             days per week</li>
12119         </ul></li>
12120       <li>For students (sets):
12121         <ul>
12122           <li>Not available periods</li>
12123           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
12124           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12125           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12126           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12127           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12128
12129           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12130             days per week</li>
12131         </ul></li>
12132       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
12133         <ul>
12134           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
12135           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
12136           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
12137           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
12138           <li>End(s) students day</li>
12139           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
12140           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
12141             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
12142           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
12143           <li>Not overlapping</li>
12144           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
12145           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
12146         </ul></li>
12147     </ul></li>
12148
12149   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
12150     <ul>
12151       <li>Room not available periods</li>
12152       <li>For teacher(s):
12153         <ul>
12154           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12155           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12156           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
12157         </ul>
12158       </li>
12159
12160       <li>For students (sets):
12161         <ul>
12162           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12163           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12164           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
12165         </ul>
12166       </li>
12167       <li>Preferred room(s):
12168         <ul>
12169           <li>For a subject</li>
12170           <li>For an activity tag</li>
12171           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
12172           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
12173         </ul>
12174       </li>
12175
12176       <li>For a set of activities:
12177         <ul>
12178           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
12179         </ul>
12180       </li>
12181     </ul>
12182   </li>
12183 </ul></p>
12184
12185 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
12186 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
12187 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
12188 manually, check it out.
12189
12190 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
12191 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
12192 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
12193 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
12194 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
12195 section</a>.</p>
12196
12197       </div>
12198       <div class="tags">
12199
12200
12201         Tags: <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>.
12202
12203
12204       </div>
12205     </div>
12206     <div class="padding"></div>
12207
12208     <div class="entry">
12209       <div class="title">
12210         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
12211       </div>
12212       <div class="date">
12213          3rd July 2012
12214       </div>
12215       <div class="body">
12216         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
12217 project (Norwegian version of
12218 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
12219 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
12220 a problem with the municipalities using
12221 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
12222 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
12223 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
12224 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
12225 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
12226 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
12227 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
12228 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
12229 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
12230 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
12231 the From: header.</p>
12232
12233 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
12234 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
12235 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
12236 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
12237 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
12238 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
12239 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
12240 behaviour.</p>
12241
12242 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
12243 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
12244 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
12245 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
12246 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
12247 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
12248 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
12249
12250       </div>
12251       <div class="tags">
12252
12253
12254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12255
12256
12257       </div>
12258     </div>
12259     <div class="padding"></div>
12260
12261     <div class="entry">
12262       <div class="title">
12263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
12264       </div>
12265       <div class="date">
12266         26th June 2012
12267       </div>
12268       <div class="body">
12269         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
12270 another interview with the people behind
12271 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
12272 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
12273 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
12274 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
12275 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
12276 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12277 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12278
12279 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12280
12281 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
12282 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
12283 ICT in schools</p>
12284
12285 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12286 project?</strong></p>
12287
12288 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
12289 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
12290 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
12291 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
12292
12293 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12294 Edu?</strong></p>
12295
12296 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
12297 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
12298 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
12299 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
12300
12301 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12302 Edu?</strong></p>
12303
12304 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
12305 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
12306 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
12307 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
12308 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
12309 technologies in school.</p>
12310
12311 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12312
12313 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
12314 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
12315 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
12316
12317 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12318 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12319
12320 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
12321 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
12322 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
12323 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
12324
12325 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
12326 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
12327 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
12328
12329 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
12330 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
12331 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
12332 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
12333 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
12334 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
12335 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
12336 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
12337 working there.</p>
12338
12339       </div>
12340       <div class="tags">
12341
12342
12343         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
12344
12345
12346       </div>
12347     </div>
12348     <div class="padding"></div>
12349
12350     <div class="entry">
12351       <div class="title">
12352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12353       </div>
12354       <div class="date">
12355         24th June 2012
12356       </div>
12357       <div class="body">
12358         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
12359 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
12360 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
12361 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
12362 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
12363 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
12364 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
12365 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
12366 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
12367 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
12368 missing in my book.</p>
12369
12370 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
12371 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
12372 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
12373 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
12374 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
12375 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
12376 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
12377
12378       </div>
12379       <div class="tags">
12380
12381
12382         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
12383
12384
12385       </div>
12386     </div>
12387     <div class="padding"></div>
12388
12389     <div class="entry">
12390       <div class="title">
12391         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
12392       </div>
12393       <div class="date">
12394         11th June 2012
12395       </div>
12396       <div class="body">
12397         <p>During my work on
12398 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
12399 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
12400 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
12401 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
12402 explanation.</p>
12403
12404 <p><ul>
12405
12406 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
12407 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
12408 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
12409 system depend on tasksel tasks in
12410 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
12411 installation.</li>
12412
12413 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
12414 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
12415 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
12416 at least try to enable it for these services:
12417 <ul>
12418
12419   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
12420     quotas.</li>
12421   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
12422   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
12423   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
12424   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
12425   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
12426
12427 </ul></li>
12428
12429 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
12430 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
12431 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
12432 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
12433
12434 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
12435 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
12436 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
12437
12438 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
12439 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
12440 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
12441 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
12442 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
12443 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
12444
12445 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
12446 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
12447 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
12448 in Wheezy.
12449
12450 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
12451 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
12452 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
12453
12454 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
12455 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
12456 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
12457 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
12458
12459 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
12460 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
12461 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
12462 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
12463
12464 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
12465 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
12466 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
12467
12468 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
12469 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
12470 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
12471
12472 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
12473 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
12474 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
12475 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
12476 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
12477
12478 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
12479 <ul>
12480
12481 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
12482 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
12483 <li>and probably more?</li>
12484 </ul></li>
12485
12486 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
12487 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
12488 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
12489 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
12490 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
12491 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
12492 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
12493 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
12494
12495
12496 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
12497 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
12498 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
12499 use.</li>
12500
12501 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
12502 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
12503 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
12504 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
12505 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
12506
12507 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
12508 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
12509 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
12510 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
12511 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
12512 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
12513
12514 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
12515 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
12516 There are at least three implementations,
12517 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
12518 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
12519 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
12520 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
12521 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
12522 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
12523 given room.</li>
12524
12525 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
12526 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
12527 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
12528 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
12529 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
12530 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
12531 investigated.</li>
12532
12533 </ul></p>
12534
12535 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
12536 version.</p>
12537
12538       </div>
12539       <div class="tags">
12540
12541
12542         Tags: <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>.
12543
12544
12545       </div>
12546     </div>
12547     <div class="padding"></div>
12548
12549     <div class="entry">
12550       <div class="title">
12551         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
12552       </div>
12553       <div class="date">
12554          9th June 2012
12555       </div>
12556       <div class="body">
12557         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
12558 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
12559 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
12560 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
12561 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
12562 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
12563 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
12564 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
12565 be willing to pay for.</p>
12566
12567 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
12568 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
12569 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
12570 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
12571 Orwell</a>.</p>
12572
12573       </div>
12574       <div class="tags">
12575
12576
12577         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
12578
12579
12580       </div>
12581     </div>
12582     <div class="padding"></div>
12583
12584     <div class="entry">
12585       <div class="title">
12586         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
12587       </div>
12588       <div class="date">
12589          6th June 2012
12590       </div>
12591       <div class="body">
12592         <p>A few days ago
12593 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
12594 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
12595 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
12596 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
12597 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
12598 code for HP, Dell and IBM
12599 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
12600 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
12601 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
12602 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
12603 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
12604
12605 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
12606 output:
12607
12608 <blockquote><pre>
12609 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
12610 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
12611 %
12612 </pre></blockquote>
12613
12614 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
12615 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
12616 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
12617
12618       </div>
12619       <div class="tags">
12620
12621
12622         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12623
12624
12625       </div>
12626     </div>
12627     <div class="padding"></div>
12628
12629     <div class="entry">
12630       <div class="title">
12631         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
12632       </div>
12633       <div class="date">
12634          2nd June 2012
12635       </div>
12636       <div class="body">
12637         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
12638 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12639 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
12640 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
12641 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12642 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12643
12644 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12645
12646 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
12647 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
12648 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
12649 by Angela).</p>
12650
12651 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
12652 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
12653 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
12654 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
12655 becoming an osteopath.</p>
12656
12657 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
12658 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
12659 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
12660 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
12661 skills with communication skills.</p>
12662
12663 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12664 project?</strong></p>
12665
12666 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
12667 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
12668 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
12669 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
12670 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
12671
12672 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
12673 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
12674 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
12675 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
12676 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
12677 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
12678 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
12679 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
12680 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
12681
12682 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
12683 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
12684 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
12685
12686 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
12687
12688 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
12689 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
12690 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
12691 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
12692 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
12693 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
12694 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
12695 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
12696 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
12697 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
12698 point.</p>
12699
12700 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
12701 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
12702 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
12703 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
12704 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
12705 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
12706
12707 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
12708 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
12709 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
12710 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
12711 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
12712 spare time.</p>
12713
12714 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
12715 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
12716 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
12717 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
12718 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
12719
12720 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
12721 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
12722 avoidance do exist.</p>
12723
12724 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
12725 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
12726 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
12727 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
12728 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
12729 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
12730 and probably a gain for all.</p>
12731
12732 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12733 Edu?</strong></p>
12734
12735 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
12736 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
12737 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
12738 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
12739 project communication, honest communication within the group of
12740 developers, etc.</p>
12741
12742 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12743 Edu?</strong></p>
12744
12745 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
12746
12747 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
12748 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
12749 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
12750 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
12751 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
12752 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
12753 contribute).</p>
12754
12755 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
12756 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
12757 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
12758 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
12759 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
12760 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
12761 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
12762 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
12763 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
12764 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
12765
12766 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12767
12768 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
12769
12770 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
12771 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
12772 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
12773
12774 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
12775 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
12776 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
12777 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
12778
12779 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
12780 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
12781 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
12782 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
12783 whiteboard.</p>
12784
12785 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
12786
12787 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12788 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12789
12790 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
12791 enrol people.</p>
12792
12793       </div>
12794       <div class="tags">
12795
12796
12797         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
12798
12799
12800       </div>
12801     </div>
12802     <div class="padding"></div>
12803
12804     <div class="entry">
12805       <div class="title">
12806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
12807       </div>
12808       <div class="date">
12809          1st June 2012
12810       </div>
12811       <div class="body">
12812         <p>A few years ago I wrote
12813 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
12814 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
12815 I have learned from colleges here at the
12816 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
12817 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
12818 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
12819 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
12820 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
12821
12822 <p><pre>
12823 use strict;
12824 use warnings;
12825 use SOAP::Lite;
12826 use Data::Dumper;
12827 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
12828 my $App = 'test';
12829 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
12830 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
12831 my $s = SOAP::Lite
12832     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
12833     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
12834     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
12835     ;
12836 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
12837     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
12838     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
12839     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
12840 );
12841 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
12842 </pre></p>
12843
12844 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
12845
12846 <p><pre>
12847 $VAR1 = {
12848           'Asset' => {
12849                      'Entitlements' => {
12850                                        'EntitlementData' => [
12851                                                             {
12852                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12853                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
12854                                                               'Provider' => '',
12855                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12856                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12857                                                             },
12858                                                             {
12859                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12860                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
12861                                                               'Provider' => '',
12862                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12863                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12864                                                             },
12865                                                             {
12866                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12867                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
12868                                                               'Provider' => '',
12869                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12870                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12871                                                             }
12872                                                           ]
12873                                      },
12874                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
12875                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
12876                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
12877                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
12878                                           'Buid' => '2323',
12879                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
12880                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
12881                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
12882                                         }
12883                    }
12884         };
12885 </pre></p>
12886
12887 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
12888 service outside the
12889 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
12890 documentation</a>, and according to
12891 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
12892 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
12893 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
12894
12895 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
12896 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
12897
12898       </div>
12899       <div class="tags">
12900
12901
12902         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12903
12904
12905       </div>
12906     </div>
12907     <div class="padding"></div>
12908
12909     <div class="entry">
12910       <div class="title">
12911         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
12912       </div>
12913       <div class="date">
12914         31st May 2012
12915       </div>
12916       <div class="body">
12917         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
12918 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
12919 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
12920 running Debian Squeeze, where
12921 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
12922 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
12923 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
12924 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
12925 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
12926 another day.</p>
12927
12928 <p>After calibration, I get a
12929 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
12930 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
12931 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
12932 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
12933 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
12934 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
12935 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
12936 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
12937 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
12938 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
12939 and a simple</p>
12940
12941 <p><pre>
12942 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
12943 </pre></p>
12944
12945 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
12946 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
12947 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
12948 enough for now.</p>
12949
12950       </div>
12951       <div class="tags">
12952
12953
12954         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12955
12956
12957       </div>
12958     </div>
12959     <div class="padding"></div>
12960
12961     <div class="entry">
12962       <div class="title">
12963         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
12964       </div>
12965       <div class="date">
12966         27th May 2012
12967       </div>
12968       <div class="body">
12969         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
12970 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12971 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
12972 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
12973 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
12974 since then, helping to make sure the
12975 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12976 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
12977
12978 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12979
12980 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
12981 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
12982 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
12983 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
12984 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
12985 our computer network.</p>
12986
12987 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
12988 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
12989 (4 months).</p>
12990
12991 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12992 project?</strong></p>
12993
12994 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
12995 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
12996 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
12997 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
12998 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
12999 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
13000 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
13001 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
13002 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
13003 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
13004 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
13005 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
13006 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
13007 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
13008
13009 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13010 Edu?</strong></p>
13011
13012 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
13013 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
13014 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
13015 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
13016 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
13017 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
13018 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
13019 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
13020
13021 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13022 Edu?</strong></p>
13023
13024 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
13025 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
13026 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
13027 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
13028 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
13029 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
13030 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
13031 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
13032 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
13033 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
13034 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
13035 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
13036
13037 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13038
13039 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
13040 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
13041 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
13042
13043 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13044 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13045
13046 <p><ol>
13047
13048 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
13049 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
13050 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
13051 developing.</li>
13052
13053 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
13054 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
13055 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
13056 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
13057 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
13058
13059 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
13060 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
13061 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
13062
13063 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
13064 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
13065 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
13066 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
13067
13068 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
13069 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
13070 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
13071
13072 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
13073
13074 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
13075 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
13076 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
13077 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
13078
13079 </ol></p>
13080
13081       </div>
13082       <div class="tags">
13083
13084
13085         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
13086
13087
13088       </div>
13089     </div>
13090     <div class="padding"></div>
13091
13092     <div class="entry">
13093       <div class="title">
13094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
13095       </div>
13096       <div class="date">
13097         26th May 2012
13098       </div>
13099       <div class="body">
13100         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
13101 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
13102 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
13103 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
13104 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
13105
13106 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
13107 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
13108 comment:</p>
13109
13110 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
13111 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
13112 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
13113 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
13114 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
13115 </blockquote></p>
13116
13117 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
13118 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
13119 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
13120 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
13121 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
13122 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
13123 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
13124 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
13125 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
13126 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
13127 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
13128 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
13129 of wasted effort.</p>
13130
13131 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
13132 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
13133 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
13134
13135 <p>See
13136 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
13137 and
13138 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
13139 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
13140 </blockquote></p>
13141
13142       </div>
13143       <div class="tags">
13144
13145
13146         Tags: <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>.
13147
13148
13149       </div>
13150     </div>
13151     <div class="padding"></div>
13152
13153     <div class="entry">
13154       <div class="title">
13155         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
13156       </div>
13157       <div class="date">
13158         18th May 2012
13159       </div>
13160       <div class="body">
13161         <p>In january, I
13162 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
13163 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
13164 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
13165 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
13166 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
13167 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
13168 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
13169 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
13170 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
13171 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
13172
13173 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
13174 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
13175 drivers. :)</p>
13176
13177       </div>
13178       <div class="tags">
13179
13180
13181         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13182
13183
13184       </div>
13185     </div>
13186     <div class="padding"></div>
13187
13188     <div class="entry">
13189       <div class="title">
13190         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
13191       </div>
13192       <div class="date">
13193         13th May 2012
13194       </div>
13195       <div class="body">
13196         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
13197 publish another interview with the people behind
13198 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13199 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
13200 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
13201 details get right before release.
13202
13203 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13204
13205 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
13206 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
13207 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
13208 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
13209 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
13210 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
13211 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
13212 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
13213
13214 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
13215 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
13216 home since 2006.</p>
13217
13218 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13219 project?</strong></p>
13220
13221 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
13222 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
13223 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
13224 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
13225 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
13226 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
13227
13228 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
13229 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
13230 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
13231 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
13232 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
13233 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
13234 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
13235 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
13236 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
13237 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
13238 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
13239 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
13240 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
13241 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
13242 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
13243 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
13244
13245 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13246 Edu?</strong></p>
13247
13248 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
13249 for me as today.</p>
13250
13251 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
13252
13253 <p><ul>
13254
13255 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
13256 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
13257
13258 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
13259 cost.</li>
13260
13261 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
13262 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
13263 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
13264 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
13265 server</li>
13266
13267 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
13268 school.</li>
13269
13270 </ul></p>
13271
13272 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
13273 came up in this way:</p>
13274
13275 <p><ul>
13276
13277 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
13278 now.</li>
13279
13280 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
13281 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
13282 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
13283
13284 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
13285 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
13286 interfaces used in the past.</li>
13287
13288 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
13289 different needs.</li>
13290
13291 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
13292
13293 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
13294 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
13295 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
13296
13297 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
13298 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
13299
13300 </ul></p>
13301
13302 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13303 Edu?</strong></p>
13304
13305 <p><ul>
13306
13307 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
13308 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
13309 whole municipality areas.</li>
13310
13311 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
13312 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
13313 politicians.</li>
13314
13315 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
13316
13317 </ul></p>
13318
13319 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13320
13321 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
13322 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
13323 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
13324 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
13325 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
13326 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
13327
13328 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
13329 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
13330 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
13331 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
13332 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
13333
13334 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13335 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13336
13337 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
13338 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
13339 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
13340
13341       </div>
13342       <div class="tags">
13343
13344
13345         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
13346
13347
13348       </div>
13349     </div>
13350     <div class="padding"></div>
13351
13352     <div class="entry">
13353       <div class="title">
13354         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
13355       </div>
13356       <div class="date">
13357         30th April 2012
13358       </div>
13359       <div class="body">
13360         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
13361 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
13362
13363 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
13364 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
13365 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
13366 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
13367 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
13368 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
13369 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
13370 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
13371 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
13372 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
13373 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
13374 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
13375 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
13376 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
13377 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
13378 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
13379
13380 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
13381 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
13382 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
13383 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
13384 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
13385 finally found a Danish supplier
13386 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
13387 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
13388 days ago.</p>
13389
13390 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
13391 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
13392 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
13393 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
13394 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
13395 toys.</p>
13396
13397       </div>
13398       <div class="tags">
13399
13400
13401         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13402
13403
13404       </div>
13405     </div>
13406     <div class="padding"></div>
13407
13408     <div class="entry">
13409       <div class="title">
13410         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
13411       </div>
13412       <div class="date">
13413         26th April 2012
13414       </div>
13415       <div class="body">
13416         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
13417 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
13418 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
13419 that the video editor application included with
13420 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
13421 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
13422 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
13423
13424 <p><blockquote>
13425 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
13426 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
13427 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
13428 </blockquote></p>
13429
13430 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
13431
13432 <p><blockquote>
13433 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
13434 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
13435 </blockquote></p>
13436
13437 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
13438 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
13439 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
13440 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
13441 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
13442 video.  AMR is
13443 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
13444 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
13445 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
13446 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
13447 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
13448 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
13449 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
13450
13451 <p>I know why I prefer
13452 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
13453 standards</a> also for video.</p>
13454
13455       </div>
13456       <div class="tags">
13457
13458
13459         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13460
13461
13462       </div>
13463     </div>
13464     <div class="padding"></div>
13465
13466     <div class="entry">
13467       <div class="title">
13468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
13469       </div>
13470       <div class="date">
13471         19th April 2012
13472       </div>
13473       <div class="body">
13474         <p>Here in Norway, the
13475 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
13476 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
13477 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
13478 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
13479 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
13480 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
13481 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
13482 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
13483 on the same level.</p>
13484
13485 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
13486 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
13487 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
13488 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
13489 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
13490 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
13491 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
13492 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
13493 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
13494 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
13495 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
13496 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
13497 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
13498 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
13499 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
13500 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
13501 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
13502 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
13503
13504 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
13505 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
13506 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
13507 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
13508 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
13509 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
13510 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
13511 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
13512
13513 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
13514 from Simon Phipps
13515 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
13516 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
13517
13518 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
13519 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
13520 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
13521 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
13522 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
13523 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
13524 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
13525 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
13526 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
13527
13528       </div>
13529       <div class="tags">
13530
13531
13532         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13533
13534
13535       </div>
13536     </div>
13537     <div class="padding"></div>
13538
13539     <div class="entry">
13540       <div class="title">
13541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
13542       </div>
13543       <div class="date">
13544         15th April 2012
13545       </div>
13546       <div class="body">
13547         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13548 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
13549 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
13550 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
13551 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
13552 up in the recently released
13553 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
13554 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13555
13556 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13557
13558 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
13559 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
13560 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
13561 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
13562 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
13563 information technology and science/technology.</p>
13564
13565 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13566 project?</strong></p>
13567
13568 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
13569 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
13570 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
13571 contributing.</p>
13572
13573 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13574 Edu?</strong></p>
13575
13576 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
13577 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
13578 Debian Project!</p>
13579
13580 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13581 Edu?</strong></p>
13582
13583 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
13584 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
13585 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
13586 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
13587 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
13588 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
13589 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
13590
13591 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
13592 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
13593
13594 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13595
13596 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
13597 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
13598 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
13599 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
13600
13601 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13602 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13603
13604 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
13605 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
13606 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
13607 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
13608 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
13609 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
13610 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
13611
13612 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
13613 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
13614 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
13615 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
13616 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
13617 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
13618 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
13619 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
13620
13621       </div>
13622       <div class="tags">
13623
13624
13625         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
13626
13627
13628       </div>
13629     </div>
13630     <div class="padding"></div>
13631
13632     <div class="entry">
13633       <div class="title">
13634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
13635       </div>
13636       <div class="date">
13637          8th April 2012
13638       </div>
13639       <div class="body">
13640         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
13641 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
13642 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
13643 contributor to the
13644 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
13645 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
13646
13647 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13648
13649 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
13650 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
13651
13652 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13653 project?</strong></p>
13654
13655 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
13656 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
13657 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
13658 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
13659 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
13660 "localisation".</p>
13661
13662 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13663 Edu?</strong></p>
13664
13665 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13666 Edu?</strong></p>
13667
13668 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
13669 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
13670 education system.</p>
13671
13672 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
13673 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
13674 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
13675 money on the latest hardware.</p>
13676
13677 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13678
13679 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
13680 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
13681 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
13682
13683 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13684 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13685
13686 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
13687 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
13688 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
13689
13690       </div>
13691       <div class="tags">
13692
13693
13694         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
13695
13696
13697       </div>
13698     </div>
13699     <div class="padding"></div>
13700
13701     <div class="entry">
13702       <div class="title">
13703         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
13704       </div>
13705       <div class="date">
13706          6th April 2012
13707       </div>
13708       <div class="body">
13709         <p>Recently I have spent time with
13710 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
13711 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13712 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
13713 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
13714 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
13715 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
13716 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
13717 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
13718
13719 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
13720 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
13721 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
13722 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
13723 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
13724 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
13725 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
13726 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
13727
13728 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
13729 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
13730 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
13731 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
13732 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
13733 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
13734 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
13735 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
13736
13737 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
13738 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
13739 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
13740 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
13741 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
13742 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
13743 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
13744 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
13745 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
13746 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
13747
13748 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
13749 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
13750 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
13751 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
13752
13753 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
13754 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
13755
13756       </div>
13757       <div class="tags">
13758
13759
13760         Tags: <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>.
13761
13762
13763       </div>
13764     </div>
13765     <div class="padding"></div>
13766
13767     <div class="entry">
13768       <div class="title">
13769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
13770       </div>
13771       <div class="date">
13772          5th April 2012
13773       </div>
13774       <div class="body">
13775         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
13776 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
13777 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
13778 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
13779 for schools.  Check out his article
13780 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
13781 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
13782
13783       </div>
13784       <div class="tags">
13785
13786
13787         Tags: <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>.
13788
13789
13790       </div>
13791     </div>
13792     <div class="padding"></div>
13793
13794     <div class="entry">
13795       <div class="title">
13796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
13797       </div>
13798       <div class="date">
13799          1st April 2012
13800       </div>
13801       <div class="body">
13802         <p>Germany is a core area for the
13803 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13804 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
13805 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
13806
13807 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13808
13809 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
13810 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
13811 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
13812 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
13813 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
13814 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
13815 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
13816 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
13817
13818 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
13819 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
13820 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
13821 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
13822 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
13823 the end of April this year.</p>
13824
13825 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13826 project?</strong></p>
13827
13828 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
13829 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
13830 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
13831 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
13832 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
13833 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
13834 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
13835 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
13836 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
13837 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
13838 Skolelinux.</p>
13839
13840 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
13841 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
13842 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
13843 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
13844 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
13845 the admin teachers.</p>
13846
13847 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13848 Edu?</strong></p>
13849
13850 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
13851 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
13852 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
13853
13854 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
13855 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
13856 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
13857 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
13858 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
13859
13860 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13861 Edu?</strong></p>
13862
13863 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
13864
13865 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13866
13867 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
13868 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
13869 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
13870 LibreOffice.</p>
13871
13872 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13873 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13874
13875 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
13876 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
13877 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
13878
13879       </div>
13880       <div class="tags">
13881
13882
13883         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
13884
13885
13886       </div>
13887     </div>
13888     <div class="padding"></div>
13889
13890     <div class="entry">
13891       <div class="title">
13892         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
13893       </div>
13894       <div class="date">
13895         25th March 2012
13896       </div>
13897       <div class="body">
13898         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
13899
13900 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
13901 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
13902 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
13903 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
13904 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
13905 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
13906 and download as a
13907 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
13908 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
13909
13910 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
13911   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
13912     <p>Download video as
13913       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
13914 </video></p>
13915
13916       </div>
13917       <div class="tags">
13918
13919
13920         Tags: <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>.
13921
13922
13923       </div>
13924     </div>
13925     <div class="padding"></div>
13926
13927     <div class="entry">
13928       <div class="title">
13929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
13930       </div>
13931       <div class="date">
13932         19th March 2012
13933       </div>
13934       <div class="body">
13935         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13936 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
13937 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
13938 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
13939 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
13940
13941 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13942
13943 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
13944 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
13945 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
13946 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
13947 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
13948 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
13949 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
13950 installations.</p>
13951
13952 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13953 project?</strong></p>
13954
13955 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
13956 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
13957 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
13958 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
13959 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
13960 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
13961 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
13962 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
13963 these things we decided to try it.</p>
13964
13965 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13966 Edu?</strong></p>
13967
13968 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
13969 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
13970 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
13971 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
13972 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
13973 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
13974 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
13975 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
13976
13977 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13978 Edu?</strong></p>
13979
13980 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
13981 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
13982 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
13983 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
13984 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
13985
13986 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13987
13988 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
13989 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
13990 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
13991 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
13992 that counts...)</p>
13993
13994 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13995 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13996
13997 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
13998 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
13999 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
14000 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
14001 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
14002 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
14003 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
14004 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
14005 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
14006 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
14007 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
14008
14009 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
14010 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
14011 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
14012
14013       </div>
14014       <div class="tags">
14015
14016
14017         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
14018
14019
14020       </div>
14021     </div>
14022     <div class="padding"></div>
14023
14024     <div class="entry">
14025       <div class="title">
14026         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
14027       </div>
14028       <div class="date">
14029         16th March 2012
14030       </div>
14031       <div class="body">
14032         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
14033 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
14034 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
14035 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
14036
14037 <ol>
14038
14039 <li>The documentation is written in a
14040 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
14041 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
14042 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
14043 docbook XML.</li>
14044
14045 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
14046 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
14047 with the translated text.</li>
14048
14049 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
14050 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
14051 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
14052 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
14053 images.</li>
14054
14055 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
14056 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
14057
14058 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
14059 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
14060
14061 </ol>
14062
14063 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
14064 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
14065 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
14066 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
14067 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
14068
14069 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
14070 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
14071 package</a>.</p>
14072
14073       </div>
14074       <div class="tags">
14075
14076
14077         Tags: <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>.
14078
14079
14080       </div>
14081     </div>
14082     <div class="padding"></div>
14083
14084     <div class="entry">
14085       <div class="title">
14086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
14087       </div>
14088       <div class="date">
14089         11th March 2012
14090       </div>
14091       <div class="body">
14092         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
14093 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
14094 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14095 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
14096 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
14097 you have not done so already.</p>
14098
14099 <p>I plan to present the new version at
14100 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
14101 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
14102 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
14103
14104       </div>
14105       <div class="tags">
14106
14107
14108         Tags: <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>.
14109
14110
14111       </div>
14112     </div>
14113     <div class="padding"></div>
14114
14115     <div class="entry">
14116       <div class="title">
14117         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
14118       </div>
14119       <div class="date">
14120          9th March 2012
14121       </div>
14122       <div class="body">
14123         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
14124 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
14125 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
14126 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
14127 more international audience.</p>
14128
14129 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14130 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
14131 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
14132 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
14133 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
14134 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
14135 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
14136
14137
14138 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14139
14140 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
14141 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
14142 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
14143 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
14144 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
14145 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
14146 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
14147 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
14148 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
14149 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
14150 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
14151
14152 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14153 project?</strong></p>
14154
14155 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
14156 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
14157 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
14158 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
14159 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
14160 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
14161 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
14162 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
14163 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
14164 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
14165 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
14166 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
14167 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
14168
14169 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14170 Edu?</strong></p>
14171
14172 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
14173 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
14174 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
14175 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
14176 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
14177 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
14178 Japan.</p>
14179
14180 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14181 Edu?</strong></p>
14182
14183 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
14184 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
14185 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
14186 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
14187 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
14188 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
14189 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
14190 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
14191 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
14192 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
14193 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
14194 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
14195 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
14196 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
14197 help.</p>
14198
14199 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14200
14201 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
14202 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
14203 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
14204 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
14205 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
14206 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
14207 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
14208 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
14209 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
14210 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
14211 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
14212
14213 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14214 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14215
14216 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
14217 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
14218 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
14219 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
14220 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
14221 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
14222 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
14223 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
14224 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
14225 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
14226 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
14227 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
14228
14229       </div>
14230       <div class="tags">
14231
14232
14233         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
14234
14235
14236       </div>
14237     </div>
14238     <div class="padding"></div>
14239
14240     <div class="entry">
14241       <div class="title">
14242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
14243       </div>
14244       <div class="date">
14245          7th March 2012
14246       </div>
14247       <div class="body">
14248         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
14249
14250 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
14251 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
14252 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
14253 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
14254 download as a
14255 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
14256 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
14257
14258 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
14259   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
14260     <p>Download video as
14261       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
14262 </video></p>
14263
14264       </div>
14265       <div class="tags">
14266
14267
14268         Tags: <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>.
14269
14270
14271       </div>
14272     </div>
14273     <div class="padding"></div>
14274
14275     <div class="entry">
14276       <div class="title">
14277         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14278       </div>
14279       <div class="date">
14280          4th March 2012
14281       </div>
14282       <div class="body">
14283         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
14284 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14285 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14286 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
14287 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
14288 need a software solution for your school.</p>
14289
14290       </div>
14291       <div class="tags">
14292
14293
14294         Tags: <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>.
14295
14296
14297       </div>
14298     </div>
14299     <div class="padding"></div>
14300
14301     <div class="entry">
14302       <div class="title">
14303         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
14304       </div>
14305       <div class="date">
14306          3rd March 2012
14307       </div>
14308       <div class="body">
14309         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
14310 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
14311 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
14312 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
14313 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
14314 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
14315 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
14316 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
14317 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
14318 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
14319 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
14320 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
14321 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
14322 year...</p>
14323
14324 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
14325 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
14326 name,
14327 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
14328 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
14329 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
14330 mean). I've been following
14331 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
14332 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
14333 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
14334 Check it out. :)</p>
14335
14336       </div>
14337       <div class="tags">
14338
14339
14340         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
14341
14342
14343       </div>
14344     </div>
14345     <div class="padding"></div>
14346
14347     <div class="entry">
14348       <div class="title">
14349         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14350       </div>
14351       <div class="date">
14352         27th February 2012
14353       </div>
14354       <div class="body">
14355         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
14356 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14357 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
14358 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
14359 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
14360 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
14361 need a software solution for your school.</p>
14362
14363       </div>
14364       <div class="tags">
14365
14366
14367         Tags: <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>.
14368
14369
14370       </div>
14371     </div>
14372     <div class="padding"></div>
14373
14374     <div class="entry">
14375       <div class="title">
14376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14377       </div>
14378       <div class="date">
14379         19th February 2012
14380       </div>
14381       <div class="body">
14382         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
14383 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
14384 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14385 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14386 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
14387 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
14388 solution for your school.</p>
14389
14390       </div>
14391       <div class="tags">
14392
14393
14394         Tags: <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>.
14395
14396
14397       </div>
14398     </div>
14399     <div class="padding"></div>
14400
14401     <div class="entry">
14402       <div class="title">
14403         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
14404       </div>
14405       <div class="date">
14406         14th February 2012
14407       </div>
14408       <div class="body">
14409         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
14410 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
14411 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
14412 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
14413 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
14414 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
14415 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
14416 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
14417 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
14418
14419 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
14420 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
14421 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
14422 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
14423 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
14424
14425 <blockquote><pre>
14426 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
14427 do
14428     printf "Failed disk $d: "
14429     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
14430 done
14431 </blockquote></pre>
14432
14433 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
14434 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
14435
14436 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
14437
14438 <blockquote><pre>
14439 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
14440 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
14441 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
14442 </blockquote></pre>
14443
14444 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
14445 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
14446 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
14447 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
14448 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
14449 mounted inside my box.</p>
14450
14451 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
14452 Software RAID in the
14453 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
14454 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
14455 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
14456 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
14457 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
14458 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
14459
14460       </div>
14461       <div class="tags">
14462
14463
14464         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
14465
14466
14467       </div>
14468     </div>
14469     <div class="padding"></div>
14470
14471     <div class="entry">
14472       <div class="title">
14473         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14474       </div>
14475       <div class="date">
14476         13th February 2012
14477       </div>
14478       <div class="body">
14479         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
14480 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
14481 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
14482 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
14483 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
14484 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
14485 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
14486 change the global proxy setting by editing
14487 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
14488 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
14489
14490 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
14491 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
14492 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
14493
14494 <blockquote><pre>
14495 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
14496 {
14497    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
14498        isPlainHostName(host) ||
14499        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
14500       return "DIRECT";
14501    else
14502       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
14503 }
14504 </pre></blockquote>
14505
14506 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
14507
14508 <blockquote><pre>
14509 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
14510 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
14511 </pre></blockquote>
14512
14513 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
14514 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
14515 would be used for
14516 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
14517 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
14518 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
14519 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
14520 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
14521 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
14522 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
14523 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
14524 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
14525 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
14526
14527 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
14528 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
14529 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
14530 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
14531 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
14532 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
14533
14534 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
14535 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
14536 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
14537 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
14538 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
14539 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
14540 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
14541 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
14542 the network setup changes.</p>
14543
14544 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
14545 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
14546 draft</a> and a
14547 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
14548 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
14549
14550       </div>
14551       <div class="tags">
14552
14553
14554         Tags: <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>.
14555
14556
14557       </div>
14558     </div>
14559     <div class="padding"></div>
14560
14561     <div class="entry">
14562       <div class="title">
14563         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
14564       </div>
14565       <div class="date">
14566          5th February 2012
14567       </div>
14568       <div class="body">
14569         <p>Since the Lenny version of
14570 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
14571 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
14572 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
14573 in the morning.  This is done using the
14574 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
14575
14576 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
14577 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
14578 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
14579 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
14580 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
14581 the
14582 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
14583 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
14584 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
14585 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
14586 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
14587
14588 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
14589 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
14590 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
14591 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
14592 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
14593 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
14594 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
14595
14596 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
14597 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
14598 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
14599 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
14600 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
14601
14602       </div>
14603       <div class="tags">
14604
14605
14606         Tags: <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>.
14607
14608
14609       </div>
14610     </div>
14611     <div class="padding"></div>
14612
14613     <div class="entry">
14614       <div class="title">
14615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14616       </div>
14617       <div class="date">
14618          4th February 2012
14619       </div>
14620       <div class="body">
14621         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
14622 publish the third beta version of
14623 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14624 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
14625 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
14626 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
14627 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
14628 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
14629 on the project announcement list.</p>
14630
14631 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
14632 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
14633
14634 <ul>
14635
14636 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
14637   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
14638   the installation.</li>
14639
14640 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
14641   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
14642
14643 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
14644   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
14645   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
14646
14647 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
14648   for the local system administrator is created during installation
14649   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
14650   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
14651   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
14652   up to date on the system.</li>
14653
14654 </ul>
14655
14656 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
14657 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
14658 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
14659 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
14660
14661 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
14662 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
14663 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
14664 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
14665 will see you there?</p>
14666
14667       </div>
14668       <div class="tags">
14669
14670
14671         Tags: <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>.
14672
14673
14674       </div>
14675     </div>
14676     <div class="padding"></div>
14677
14678     <div class="entry">
14679       <div class="title">
14680         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
14681       </div>
14682       <div class="date">
14683         27th January 2012
14684       </div>
14685       <div class="body">
14686         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
14687 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
14688 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14689 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
14690 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
14691 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
14692 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
14693
14694 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
14695 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
14696 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
14697 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
14698 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
14699 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
14700 not taken care of by this.</p>
14701
14702 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
14703 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
14704 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
14705 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
14706 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
14707 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
14708 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
14709 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
14710 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
14711 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
14712 firmware packages.</p>
14713
14714 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
14715 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
14716 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
14717 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
14718 initrd with extra firmware, the
14719 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
14720 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
14721 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
14722
14723 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
14724 network cards working.  For this,
14725 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
14726 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
14727 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
14728
14729 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
14730 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
14731 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
14732
14733 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
14734 try.</p>
14735
14736       </div>
14737       <div class="tags">
14738
14739
14740         Tags: <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>.
14741
14742
14743       </div>
14744     </div>
14745     <div class="padding"></div>
14746
14747     <div class="entry">
14748       <div class="title">
14749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
14750       </div>
14751       <div class="date">
14752         25th January 2012
14753       </div>
14754       <div class="body">
14755         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
14756 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
14757 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
14758 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
14759 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
14760
14761 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
14762 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
14763 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
14764 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
14765 this is done, log on to the central server and run
14766 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
14767 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
14768 will look similar to this:</p>
14769
14770 <p><blockquote><pre>
14771 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
14772 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
14773 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
14774
14775 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
14776
14777 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14778 enter password: *******
14779 %
14780 </pre></blockquote></p>
14781
14782 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
14783 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
14784 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
14785 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
14786 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
14787 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
14788 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
14789 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
14790 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
14791 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
14792 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
14793 automatically.</p>
14794
14795 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
14796 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
14797
14798 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
14799 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
14800 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
14801
14802       </div>
14803       <div class="tags">
14804
14805
14806         Tags: <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>.
14807
14808
14809       </div>
14810     </div>
14811     <div class="padding"></div>
14812
14813     <div class="entry">
14814       <div class="title">
14815         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
14816       </div>
14817       <div class="date">
14818         10th January 2012
14819       </div>
14820       <div class="body">
14821         <p>In the Squeeze version of
14822 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
14823 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
14824 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
14825 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
14826 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
14827 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
14828 first time.</p>
14829
14830 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
14831 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
14832 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
14833 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
14834
14835 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
14836 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
14837 new setting.</p>
14838
14839 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
14840 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
14841 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
14842
14843       </div>
14844       <div class="tags">
14845
14846
14847         Tags: <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/web">web</a>.
14848
14849
14850       </div>
14851     </div>
14852     <div class="padding"></div>
14853
14854     <div class="entry">
14855       <div class="title">
14856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14857       </div>
14858       <div class="date">
14859          7th January 2012
14860       </div>
14861       <div class="body">
14862         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
14863 the second beta version of
14864 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
14865 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
14866 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
14867 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
14868 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
14869 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
14870 on the project announcement list.</p>
14871
14872       </div>
14873       <div class="tags">
14874
14875
14876         Tags: <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>.
14877
14878
14879       </div>
14880     </div>
14881     <div class="padding"></div>
14882
14883     <div class="entry">
14884       <div class="title">
14885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
14886       </div>
14887       <div class="date">
14888          3rd January 2012
14889       </div>
14890       <div class="body">
14891         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
14892 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
14893 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
14894 interesting.</p>
14895
14896 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
14897 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
14898 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
14899 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
14900 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
14901 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
14902 wrap up its tasks.</p>
14903
14904 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
14905 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
14906 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
14907 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
14908 because I was typing.</P>
14909
14910 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
14911 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
14912 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
14913 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
14914 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
14915 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
14916 generate entropy.</p>
14917
14918 <p>The fix is in
14919 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
14920 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
14921 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
14922 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
14923
14924       </div>
14925       <div class="tags">
14926
14927
14928         Tags: <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>.
14929
14930
14931       </div>
14932     </div>
14933     <div class="padding"></div>
14934
14935     <div class="entry">
14936       <div class="title">
14937         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
14938       </div>
14939       <div class="date">
14940         21st November 2011
14941       </div>
14942       <div class="body">
14943         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
14944 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
14945 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
14946 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
14947 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
14948 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
14949 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
14950 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
14951 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
14952 the tools to do so.</p>
14953
14954 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
14955 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
14956 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
14957 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
14958
14959 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
14960 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
14961 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
14962 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
14963 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
14964 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
14965 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
14966 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
14967
14968 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
14969 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
14970 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
14971
14972 <p><pre>
14973 #!/usr/bin/perl
14974 use strict;
14975 use warnings;
14976 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
14977 BEGIN {
14978     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
14979     my %rhelmodules = (
14980         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
14981         );
14982     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
14983         eval "use $module;";
14984         if ($@) {
14985             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
14986             system("yum install -y $pkg");
14987             eval "use $module;";
14988         }
14989     }
14990 }
14991 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
14992
14993 upgrade_dell();
14994
14995 exit 0;
14996
14997 sub run_firmware_script {
14998     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
14999     unless ($script) {
15000         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
15001         exit 1
15002     }
15003     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
15004
15005     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
15006         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
15007     } else {
15008         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
15009     }
15010 }
15011
15012 sub run_firmware_scripts {
15013     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
15014     # Run firmware packages
15015     for my $dir (@dirs) {
15016         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
15017         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
15018         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
15019             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
15020             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
15021         }
15022         closedir $dh;
15023     }
15024 }
15025
15026 sub download {
15027     my $url = shift;
15028     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
15029     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
15030 }
15031
15032 sub upgrade_dell {
15033     my @dirs;
15034     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15035     chomp $product;
15036
15037     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
15038
15039         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
15040         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
15041
15042         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
15043             CLEANUP => 1
15044             );
15045         chdir($tmpdir);
15046         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
15047         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
15048         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
15049         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
15050         my $fwopts = "-q";
15051         if (@paths) {
15052             for my $url (@paths) {
15053                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
15054             }
15055             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
15056         } else {
15057             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15058             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15059         }
15060         chdir('/');
15061     } else {
15062         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15063         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15064     }
15065 }
15066
15067 sub fetch_dell_fw {
15068     my $path = shift;
15069     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
15070     download($url);
15071 }
15072
15073 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
15074 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
15075 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
15076 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
15077     my $filename = shift;
15078
15079     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15080     chomp $product;
15081     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
15082
15083     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
15084
15085     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
15086     my @paths;
15087     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
15088         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
15089         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
15090         my $oscode;
15091         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
15092             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
15093         } else {
15094             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
15095         }
15096         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
15097         {
15098             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
15099         }
15100     }
15101     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
15102         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
15103
15104         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
15105         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
15106
15107         my $cpath = $component->{path};
15108         for my $path (@paths) {
15109             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
15110                 push(@paths, $cpath);
15111             }
15112         }
15113     }
15114     return @paths;
15115 }
15116 </pre>
15117
15118 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
15119 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
15120 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
15121 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
15122 outdated.</p>
15123
15124       </div>
15125       <div class="tags">
15126
15127
15128         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>.
15129
15130
15131       </div>
15132     </div>
15133     <div class="padding"></div>
15134
15135     <div class="entry">
15136       <div class="title">
15137         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
15138       </div>
15139       <div class="date">
15140          7th October 2011
15141       </div>
15142       <div class="body">
15143         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
15144 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
15145 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
15146 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
15147 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
15148 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
15149 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
15150 models.</p>
15151
15152 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
15153 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
15154 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
15155 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
15156
15157 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
15158 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
15159 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
15160 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
15161 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
15162 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
15163 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
15164 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
15165 distributed.</p>
15166
15167 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
15168
15169 <ul>
15170
15171 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
15172   other relevant equipment.</li>
15173
15174 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
15175
15176 </ul>
15177
15178 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
15179 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
15180 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
15181 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
15182 books available.</p>
15183
15184 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
15185 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
15186 libraries. :)</p>
15187
15188       </div>
15189       <div class="tags">
15190
15191
15192         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
15193
15194
15195       </div>
15196     </div>
15197     <div class="padding"></div>
15198
15199     <div class="entry">
15200       <div class="title">
15201         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
15202       </div>
15203       <div class="date">
15204         17th September 2011
15205       </div>
15206       <div class="body">
15207         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
15208 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
15209 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
15210 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
15211 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
15212 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
15213 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
15214 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
15215
15216 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
15217
15218 <blockquote><pre>
15219 #!/bin/sh
15220 # apt-get install lsdvd
15221 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
15222 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
15223 </pre></blockquote>
15224
15225 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
15226 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
15227 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
15228 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
15229
15230 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
15231 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
15232 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
15233 back as an ISO.
15234
15235 <blockquote><pre>
15236 #!/bin/sh
15237 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
15238 set -e
15239 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
15240 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
15241 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
15242 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
15243 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
15244 </pre></blockquote>
15245
15246 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
15247
15248 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
15249 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
15250 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
15251 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
15252 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
15253
15254 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
15255 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
15256 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
15257 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
15258 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
15259 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
15260
15261       </div>
15262       <div class="tags">
15263
15264
15265         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15266
15267
15268       </div>
15269     </div>
15270     <div class="padding"></div>
15271
15272     <div class="entry">
15273       <div class="title">
15274         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
15275       </div>
15276       <div class="date">
15277          4th August 2011
15278       </div>
15279       <div class="body">
15280         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
15281 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
15282 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
15283 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
15284 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
15285 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
15286 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
15287 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
15288 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
15289
15290 <p><blockquote>
15291 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
15292 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
15293 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
15294 </blockquote></p>
15295
15296 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
15297 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
15298 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
15299 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
15300 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
15301 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
15302 hard to explain.</p>
15303
15304 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
15305 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
15306 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
15307 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
15308 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
15309 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
15310 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
15311 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
15312 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
15313 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
15314 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
15315 mode).</p>
15316
15317 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
15318 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
15319 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
15320 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
15321 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
15322 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
15323 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
15324 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
15325 after visiting single user mode.</p>
15326
15327 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
15328 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
15329 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
15330 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
15331 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
15332 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
15333 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
15334 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
15335
15336 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
15337 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
15338 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
15339
15340       </div>
15341       <div class="tags">
15342
15343
15344         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>.
15345
15346
15347       </div>
15348     </div>
15349     <div class="padding"></div>
15350
15351     <div class="entry">
15352       <div class="title">
15353         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
15354       </div>
15355       <div class="date">
15356         30th July 2011
15357       </div>
15358       <div class="body">
15359         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
15360 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
15361 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
15362 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
15363 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
15364 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
15365 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
15366 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
15367 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
15368 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
15369 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
15370 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
15371 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
15372
15373 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
15374 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
15375 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
15376 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
15377 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
15378 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
15379 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
15380 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
15381 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
15382
15383 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
15384 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
15385 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
15386 is presented.</p>
15387
15388 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
15389 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
15390 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
15391 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
15392 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
15393 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
15394 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
15395 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
15396 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
15397 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
15398 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
15399 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
15400 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
15401 find time to push this forward.</p>
15402
15403       </div>
15404       <div class="tags">
15405
15406
15407         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>.
15408
15409
15410       </div>
15411     </div>
15412     <div class="padding"></div>
15413
15414     <div class="entry">
15415       <div class="title">
15416         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
15417       </div>
15418       <div class="date">
15419         29th July 2011
15420       </div>
15421       <div class="body">
15422         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
15423 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
15424 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
15425 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
15426 issues.</p>
15427
15428 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
15429 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
15430 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
15431
15432 <ol>
15433
15434 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
15435 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
15436 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
15437 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
15438 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
15439 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
15440 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
15441 Debian.</li>
15442
15443 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
15444 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
15445 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
15446 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
15447 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
15448 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
15449 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
15450 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
15451 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
15452 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
15453 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
15454 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
15455 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
15456
15457 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
15458 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
15459 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
15460 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
15461 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
15462 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
15463 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
15464 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
15465 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
15466 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
15467
15468 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
15469 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
15470 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
15471 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
15472 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
15473 latter behaviour.</li>
15474
15475 </ol>
15476
15477 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
15478 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
15479 it do not matter much.</p>
15480
15481 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
15482 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
15483 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
15484
15485       </div>
15486       <div class="tags">
15487
15488
15489         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15490
15491
15492       </div>
15493     </div>
15494     <div class="padding"></div>
15495
15496     <div class="entry">
15497       <div class="title">
15498         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
15499       </div>
15500       <div class="date">
15501         26th July 2011
15502       </div>
15503       <div class="body">
15504         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
15505 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
15506 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
15507 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
15508 security support for a few years.</p>
15509
15510 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
15511 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
15512 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
15513 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
15514 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
15515 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
15516 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
15517 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
15518 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
15519 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
15520 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
15521 easier in the future.</p>
15522
15523 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
15524 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
15525 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
15526 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
15527 do not have time for.</p>
15528
15529       </div>
15530       <div class="tags">
15531
15532
15533         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
15534
15535
15536       </div>
15537     </div>
15538     <div class="padding"></div>
15539
15540     <div class="entry">
15541       <div class="title">
15542         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
15543       </div>
15544       <div class="date">
15545         20th June 2011
15546       </div>
15547       <div class="body">
15548         <p>Reading
15549 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
15550 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
15551 parts of the
15552 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
15553 and
15554 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
15555 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
15556 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
15557 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
15558
15559       </div>
15560       <div class="tags">
15561
15562
15563         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
15564
15565
15566       </div>
15567     </div>
15568     <div class="padding"></div>
15569
15570     <div class="entry">
15571       <div class="title">
15572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
15573       </div>
15574       <div class="date">
15575         30th April 2011
15576       </div>
15577       <div class="body">
15578         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
15579 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
15580 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
15581 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
15582 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
15583 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
15584 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
15585 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
15586 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
15587 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
15588
15589 <p>Where is it?  Visit
15590 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
15591 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
15592 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
15593 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
15594
15595       </div>
15596       <div class="tags">
15597
15598
15599         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
15600
15601
15602       </div>
15603     </div>
15604     <div class="padding"></div>
15605
15606     <div class="entry">
15607       <div class="title">
15608         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
15609       </div>
15610       <div class="date">
15611         29th April 2011
15612       </div>
15613       <div class="body">
15614         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
15615 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
15616 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
15617 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
15618 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
15619 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
15620 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
15621 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
15622 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
15623 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
15624 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
15625 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
15626 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
15627
15628 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
15629 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
15630 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
15631 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
15632 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
15633 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
15634 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
15635 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
15636 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
15637 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
15638 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
15639 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
15640 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
15641
15642 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
15643 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
15644 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
15645 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
15646 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
15647 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
15648 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
15649 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
15650 it.</p>
15651
15652 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
15653 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
15654 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
15655 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
15656 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
15657 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
15658 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
15659
15660 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
15661 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
15662 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
15663 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
15664 and range= options.</p>
15665
15666 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
15667 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
15668 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
15669 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
15670 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
15671 to best handle this.  I've noticed
15672 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
15673 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
15674 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
15675 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
15676
15677 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
15678 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
15679 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
15680 discussions instead of only
15681 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
15682 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
15683 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
15684 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
15685 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
15686 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
15687
15688       </div>
15689       <div class="tags">
15690
15691
15692         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
15693
15694
15695       </div>
15696     </div>
15697     <div class="padding"></div>
15698
15699     <div class="entry">
15700       <div class="title">
15701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
15702       </div>
15703       <div class="date">
15704          6th April 2011
15705       </div>
15706       <div class="body">
15707         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
15708 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
15709 A few days ago the project
15710 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
15711 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
15712 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
15713 into Gnash.</p>
15714
15715       </div>
15716       <div class="tags">
15717
15718
15719         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15720
15721
15722       </div>
15723     </div>
15724     <div class="padding"></div>
15725
15726     <div class="entry">
15727       <div class="title">
15728         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
15729       </div>
15730       <div class="date">
15731          3rd April 2011
15732       </div>
15733       <div class="body">
15734         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
15735 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
15736 update in English.</p>
15737
15738 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
15739 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
15740 of the British service
15741 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
15742 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
15743 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
15744 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
15745 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
15746 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
15747 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
15748 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
15749 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
15750 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
15751 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
15752 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
15753 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
15754
15755 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
15756 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
15757 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
15758 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
15759 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
15760 public infrastructure.</p>
15761
15762 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
15763 such service?</p>
15764
15765       </div>
15766       <div class="tags">
15767
15768
15769         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
15770
15771
15772       </div>
15773     </div>
15774     <div class="padding"></div>
15775
15776     <div class="entry">
15777       <div class="title">
15778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
15779       </div>
15780       <div class="date">
15781         28th January 2011
15782       </div>
15783       <div class="body">
15784         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
15785 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
15786 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
15787 available on the Internet, and check our locally
15788 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
15789 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
15790 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
15791 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
15792 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
15793 out which security holes were present in our free software
15794 collection.</p>
15795
15796 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
15797 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
15798 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
15799 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
15800 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
15801 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
15802 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
15803 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
15804 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
15805 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
15806 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
15807 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
15808 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
15809 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
15810 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
15811 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
15812
15813 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
15814 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
15815 check out, one could look up
15816 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
15817 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
15818 The most recent one is
15819 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
15820 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
15821 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
15822
15823 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
15824 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
15825 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
15826 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
15827 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
15828 security issues out.</p>
15829
15830 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
15831 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
15832 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
15833 RHEL is providing
15834 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
15835 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
15836 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
15837
15838 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
15839 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
15840 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
15841 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
15842 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
15843 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
15844 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
15845 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
15846 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
15847 established soon.</p>
15848
15849 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
15850 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
15851 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
15852 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
15853 for their packages.</p>
15854
15855       </div>
15856       <div class="tags">
15857
15858
15859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
15860
15861
15862       </div>
15863     </div>
15864     <div class="padding"></div>
15865
15866     <div class="entry">
15867       <div class="title">
15868         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
15869       </div>
15870       <div class="date">
15871         23rd January 2011
15872       </div>
15873       <div class="body">
15874         <p>In the
15875 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
15876 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
15877 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
15878 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
15879 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
15880 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
15881 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
15882 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
15883 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
15884 one of my machines like this:</p>
15885
15886 <pre>
15887 loaded modules:
15888 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
15889 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
15890 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
15891 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
15892 10de:03ec pata_amd
15893 10de:03f6 sata_nv
15894 1022:1103 k8temp
15895 109e:036e bttv
15896 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
15897 11ab:4364 sky2
15898 </pre>
15899
15900 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
15901 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
15902
15903 <pre>
15904 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
15905     echo loaded pci modules:
15906     (
15907         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
15908         for address in * ; do
15909             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15910                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15911                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15912                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15913                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
15914                     echo "$id $module"
15915                 fi
15916             fi
15917         done
15918     )
15919     echo
15920 fi
15921 </pre>
15922
15923 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
15924 mappings:</p>
15925
15926 <pre>
15927 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
15928     echo loaded usb modules:
15929     (
15930         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
15931         for address in * ; do
15932             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15933                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15934                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15935                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15936                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
15937                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
15938                         echo "$id $module"
15939                     fi
15940                 fi
15941             fi
15942         done
15943     )
15944     echo
15945 fi
15946 </pre>
15947
15948 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
15949 well.</p>
15950
15951       </div>
15952       <div class="tags">
15953
15954
15955         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>.
15956
15957
15958       </div>
15959     </div>
15960     <div class="padding"></div>
15961
15962     <div class="entry">
15963       <div class="title">
15964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
15965       </div>
15966       <div class="date">
15967         16th January 2011
15968       </div>
15969       <div class="body">
15970         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
15971 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
15972 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
15973 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
15974 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
15975 the Wikipedia article on
15976 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
15977 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
15978 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
15979 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
15980 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
15981 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
15982 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
15983 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
15984 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
15985 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
15986 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
15987 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
15988
15989 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
15990 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
15991 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
15992 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
15993 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
15994 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
15995 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
15996 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
15997 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
15998 from last week</a>.</p>
15999
16000 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
16001 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
16002 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
16003 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
16004 was without royalties and license terms, check out
16005 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16006 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
16007
16008 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
16009 available from
16010 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
16011 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
16012 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
16013
16014 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
16015 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
16016 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
16017 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
16018
16019       </div>
16020       <div class="tags">
16021
16022
16023         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16024
16025
16026       </div>
16027     </div>
16028     <div class="padding"></div>
16029
16030     <div class="entry">
16031       <div class="title">
16032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
16033       </div>
16034       <div class="date">
16035         12th January 2011
16036       </div>
16037       <div class="body">
16038         <p>Today I discovered
16039 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
16040 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
16041 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
16042 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
16043 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
16044 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
16045 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
16046 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16047 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
16048 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
16049 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
16050 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
16051 on the Google announcement is available from
16052 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
16053 A good read. :)</p>
16054
16055 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
16056 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
16057 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
16058 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
16059 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
16060 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
16061 browsers support H.264, and others support
16062 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
16063 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
16064 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
16065 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
16066 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
16067 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
16068 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
16069 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
16070
16071 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
16072 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
16073 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
16074 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
16075 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
16076 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
16077 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
16078
16079 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
16080 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
16081 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
16082 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
16083 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
16084 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
16085 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
16086
16087 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
16088 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
16089 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
16090 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
16091 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
16092 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
16093 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
16094
16095 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
16096 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
16097 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
16098 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
16099 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
16100 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
16101 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
16102 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
16103 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
16104 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
16105 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
16106 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
16107 I guess time will tell.</p>
16108
16109 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
16110 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
16111 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
16112
16113       </div>
16114       <div class="tags">
16115
16116
16117         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16118
16119
16120       </div>
16121     </div>
16122     <div class="padding"></div>
16123
16124     <div class="entry">
16125       <div class="title">
16126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
16127       </div>
16128       <div class="date">
16129         30th December 2010
16130       </div>
16131       <div class="body">
16132         <p>After trying to
16133 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
16134 Ogg Theora</a> to
16135 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
16136 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
16137 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
16138 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
16139 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
16140 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
16141 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
16142
16143 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
16144 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
16145 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
16146 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
16147 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
16148 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
16149 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
16150
16151 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
16152 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
16153
16154       </div>
16155       <div class="tags">
16156
16157
16158         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
16159
16160
16161       </div>
16162     </div>
16163     <div class="padding"></div>
16164
16165     <div class="entry">
16166       <div class="title">
16167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
16168       </div>
16169       <div class="date">
16170         27th December 2010
16171       </div>
16172       <div class="body">
16173         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
16174 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
16175 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
16176 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
16177 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
16178 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
16179 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
16180 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
16181
16182 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
16183 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
16184 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
16185 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
16186 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
16187 page</a>.</p>
16188
16189 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
16190 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
16191 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
16192 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
16193 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
16194 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
16195 specification on equal terms.</p>
16196
16197 <blockquote>
16198
16199 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
16200 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
16201 open standard:</p>
16202
16203 <ul>
16204
16205 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
16206 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
16207 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
16208 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
16209
16210 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
16211 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
16212 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
16213 nominal fee.</li>
16214
16215 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
16216 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
16217 free basis.</li>
16218
16219 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
16220
16221 </ul>
16222 </blockquote>
16223
16224 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
16225 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
16226 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
16227 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
16228 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
16229 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
16230 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
16231
16232 <blockquote>
16233
16234 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
16235
16236 <ol>
16237
16238 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
16239 tilgængelig.</li>
16240
16241 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
16242 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
16243
16244 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
16245 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
16246
16247 </ol>
16248
16249 </blockquote>
16250
16251 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
16252 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
16253
16254 <blockquote>
16255
16256 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
16257
16258 <ol>
16259
16260 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
16261 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
16262
16263 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
16264 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
16265 Standard themselves;</li>
16266
16267 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
16268 any party or in any business model;</li>
16269
16270 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
16271 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
16272 parties;</li>
16273
16274 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
16275 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
16276 parties.</li>
16277
16278 </ol>
16279
16280 </blockquote>
16281
16282 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
16283 its
16284 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
16285 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
16286
16287 <blockquote>
16288 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
16289
16290 <ul>
16291
16292 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
16293   democratic:
16294
16295          <ul>
16296
16297          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
16298             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
16299             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
16300             and managed.</li>
16301
16302          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
16303             method, can be changed through input from all
16304             participants.</li>
16305
16306          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
16307             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
16308
16309          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
16310             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
16311
16312          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
16313             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
16314             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
16315
16316          </ul>
16317
16318 </li>
16319
16320 </ul>
16321
16322 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
16323 <ul>
16324
16325 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
16326   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
16327   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
16328   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
16329   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
16330
16331 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
16332   a technical or economic barriers</li>
16333
16334 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
16335   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
16336   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
16337   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
16338   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
16339   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
16340   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
16341   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
16342   intended to function.</li>
16343
16344 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
16345   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
16346   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
16347
16348 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
16349   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
16350   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
16351   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
16352   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
16353   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
16354   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
16355   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
16356
16357       <ul>
16358
16359       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
16360         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
16361         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
16362
16363       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
16364         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
16365         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
16366         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
16367
16368       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
16369         licensor</li>
16370
16371       </ul>
16372 </li>
16373
16374 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
16375   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
16376   or restricted licensing terms</li>
16377
16378 </ul>
16379
16380 </blockquote>
16381
16382 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
16383 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
16384 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
16385 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
16386 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
16387 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
16388 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
16389 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
16390 Standards.</p>
16391
16392       </div>
16393       <div class="tags">
16394
16395
16396         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
16397
16398
16399       </div>
16400     </div>
16401     <div class="padding"></div>
16402
16403     <div class="entry">
16404       <div class="title">
16405         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
16406       </div>
16407       <div class="date">
16408         25th December 2010
16409       </div>
16410       <div class="body">
16411         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
16412 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
16413
16414 <blockquote>
16415
16416 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
16417 as follows:</p>
16418
16419 <ol>
16420
16421 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
16422 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
16423 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
16424
16425 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
16426 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
16427 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
16428 parties.</li>
16429
16430 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
16431 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
16432 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
16433
16434 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
16435 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
16436
16437 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
16438
16439 </ol>
16440
16441 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
16442 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
16443 products based on the standard.</p>
16444 </blockquote>
16445
16446 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
16447 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
16448 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
16449 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
16450 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
16451 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
16452 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
16453 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
16454
16455 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
16456
16457 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
16458 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
16459 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
16460 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
16461 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
16462 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
16463 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
16464 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
16465 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
16466 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
16467 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
16468 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
16469 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
16470 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
16471
16472 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
16473
16474 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
16475 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
16476 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
16477 documentation indicating this.</p>
16478
16479 <p>According to
16480 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
16481 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
16482 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
16483 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
16484 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
16485 report is correct.</p>
16486
16487 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
16488
16489 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
16490 container format</a> and both the
16491 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
16492 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
16493 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
16494
16495 <blockquote>
16496
16497 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
16498 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
16499 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
16500 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
16501 specification compliance.
16502
16503 </blockquote>
16504
16505 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
16506 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
16507 this is the term:<p>
16508
16509 <blockquote>
16510
16511 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
16512 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
16513 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
16514 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
16515 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
16516 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
16517 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
16518 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
16519 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
16520 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
16521 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
16522 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
16523
16524 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
16525 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
16526 </blockquote>
16527
16528 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
16529 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
16530 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
16531 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
16532 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
16533
16534 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
16535
16536 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
16537 Theora format.
16538 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
16539 and
16540 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
16541 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
16542 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
16543 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
16544 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
16545 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
16546 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
16547 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
16548
16549 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
16550
16551 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
16552
16553 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
16554
16555 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
16556 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
16557 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
16558 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
16559 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
16560 this.</p>
16561
16562 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
16563 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
16564
16565       </div>
16566       <div class="tags">
16567
16568
16569         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16570
16571
16572       </div>
16573     </div>
16574     <div class="padding"></div>
16575
16576     <div class="entry">
16577       <div class="title">
16578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
16579       </div>
16580       <div class="date">
16581         25th December 2010
16582       </div>
16583       <div class="body">
16584         <p>A few days ago
16585 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
16586 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
16587 2.0 of
16588 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
16589 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
16590 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
16591 Nothing very surprising there, given
16592 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
16593 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
16594 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
16595 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
16596 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
16597 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
16598 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
16599 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
16600 standard definition from its content.</p>
16601
16602 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
16603 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
16604 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
16605 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
16606 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
16607 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
16608 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
16609 background information about that story is available in
16610 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
16611 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
16612
16613 <blockquote>
16614 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
16615 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
16616 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
16617
16618 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
16619
16620 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
16621
16622 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
16623
16624 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
16625
16626 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
16627
16628 <p>
16629 <ul>
16630 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
16631 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
16632 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
16633 </ul>
16634 </p>
16635
16636 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
16637
16638 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
16639
16640 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
16641
16642 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
16643
16644 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
16645
16646
16647 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
16648 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
16649 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
16650 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
16651 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
16652 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
16653
16654 </p>
16655
16656 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
16657
16658 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
16659
16660 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
16661
16662 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
16663
16664 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
16665
16666 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
16667
16668 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
16669
16670 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
16671
16672 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
16673
16674 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
16675
16676 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
16677
16678 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
16679
16680 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
16681
16682 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
16683
16684 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
16685
16686 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
16687
16688 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
16689
16690 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
16691
16692 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
16693
16694 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
16695
16696 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
16697
16698 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
16699
16700 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
16701
16702 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
16703
16704 <p>On security:</p>
16705
16706 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
16707
16708 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
16709
16710 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
16711
16712 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
16713
16714 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
16715
16716 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
16717
16718 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
16719
16720 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
16721
16722 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
16723
16724 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
16725
16726 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
16727
16728 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
16729
16730 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
16731
16732 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
16733
16734 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
16735
16736 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
16737
16738 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
16739
16740 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
16741
16742 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
16743
16744 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
16745
16746 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
16747
16748 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
16749
16750 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
16751
16752 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
16753
16754 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
16755
16756 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
16757
16758 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
16759
16760 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
16761
16762 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
16763
16764 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
16765
16766 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
16767
16768 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
16769
16770 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
16771
16772 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
16773
16774 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
16775
16776 <p>Cordially,<br>
16777 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
16778 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
16779 </blockquote>
16780
16781       </div>
16782       <div class="tags">
16783
16784
16785         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
16786
16787
16788       </div>
16789     </div>
16790     <div class="padding"></div>
16791
16792     <div class="entry">
16793       <div class="title">
16794         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
16795       </div>
16796       <div class="date">
16797         25th December 2010
16798       </div>
16799       <div class="body">
16800         <p>Half a year ago I
16801 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
16802 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
16803 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
16804 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
16805
16806 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
16807 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
16808 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
16809 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
16810 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
16811 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
16812 got such a great test tool available.</p>
16813
16814       </div>
16815       <div class="tags">
16816
16817
16818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
16819
16820
16821       </div>
16822     </div>
16823     <div class="padding"></div>
16824
16825     <div class="entry">
16826       <div class="title">
16827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
16828       </div>
16829       <div class="date">
16830         22nd December 2010
16831       </div>
16832       <div class="body">
16833         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
16834 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
16835 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
16836 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
16837 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
16838 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
16839 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
16840 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
16841 university.</p>
16842
16843 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
16844 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
16845 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
16846 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
16847 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
16848 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
16849 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
16850 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
16851
16852 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
16853 I perform on a new model.</p>
16854
16855 <ul>
16856
16857 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
16858 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
16859 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
16860
16861 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
16862 installation, X.org is working.</li>
16863
16864 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
16865 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
16866 reported by the program.</li>
16867
16868 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
16869 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
16870 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
16871 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
16872 normally test this by playing
16873 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
16874 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
16875
16876 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
16877 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16878
16879 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
16880 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16881
16882 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
16883 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
16884
16885 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
16886 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
16887 few.</li>
16888
16889 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
16890 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
16891 notice this.</li>
16892
16893 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
16894 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
16895 resume.</li>
16896
16897 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
16898 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
16899 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
16900 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
16901 not.</li>
16902
16903 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
16904 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
16905 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
16906 existence.</li>
16907
16908 </ul>
16909
16910 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
16911 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
16912 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
16913 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
16914 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
16915 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
16916 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
16917 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
16918
16919       </div>
16920       <div class="tags">
16921
16922
16923         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>.
16924
16925
16926       </div>
16927     </div>
16928     <div class="padding"></div>
16929
16930     <div class="entry">
16931       <div class="title">
16932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
16933       </div>
16934       <div class="date">
16935         11th December 2010
16936       </div>
16937       <div class="body">
16938         <p>As I continue to explore
16939 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
16940 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
16941 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
16942
16943 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
16944 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
16945 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
16946 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
16947 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
16948 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
16949 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
16950 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
16951 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
16952 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
16953 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
16954 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
16955 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
16956 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
16957 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
16958 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
16959 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
16960 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
16961 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
16962 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
16963
16964 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
16965 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
16966 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
16967 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
16968 If the Skolelinux foundation
16969 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
16970 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
16971 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
16972 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
16973 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
16974 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
16975 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
16976 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
16977
16978 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
16979 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
16980 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
16981 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
16982 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
16983 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
16984 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
16985 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
16986 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
16987 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
16988 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
16989 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
16990 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
16991 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
16992 currencies.</p>
16993
16994 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
16995 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
16996 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
16997 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
16998 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
16999 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
17000 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
17001 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
17002 BitCoins.  Check out
17003 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
17004 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
17005 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
17006 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
17007 yet.</p>
17008
17009 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
17010 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
17011 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
17012 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
17013 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
17014
17015       </div>
17016       <div class="tags">
17017
17018
17019         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17020
17021
17022       </div>
17023     </div>
17024     <div class="padding"></div>
17025
17026     <div class="entry">
17027       <div class="title">
17028         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
17029       </div>
17030       <div class="date">
17031         10th December 2010
17032       </div>
17033       <div class="body">
17034         <p>With this weeks lawless
17035 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
17036 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
17037 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
17038 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
17039 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
17040 A blog post from
17041 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
17042 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
17043 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
17044 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
17045 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
17046 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
17047 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
17048
17049 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
17050 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
17051 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
17052 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
17053 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
17054 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
17055 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
17056 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
17057 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
17058 Debian</a> soon.</p>
17059
17060 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
17061 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
17062 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
17063 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
17064 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
17065 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
17066 you can even get
17067 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
17068 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
17069 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
17070 on the current exchange rates.</p>
17071
17072 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
17073 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
17074 donations to the address
17075 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
17076
17077       </div>
17078       <div class="tags">
17079
17080
17081         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17082
17083
17084       </div>
17085     </div>
17086     <div class="padding"></div>
17087
17088     <div class="entry">
17089       <div class="title">
17090         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
17091       </div>
17092       <div class="date">
17093          9th December 2010
17094       </div>
17095       <div class="body">
17096         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
17097 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
17098 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
17099 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
17100 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
17101 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
17102 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
17103 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
17104 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
17105 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
17106 operational.</p>
17107
17108 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
17109 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
17110 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
17111 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
17112 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
17113 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
17114 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
17115
17116       </div>
17117       <div class="tags">
17118
17119
17120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
17121
17122
17123       </div>
17124     </div>
17125     <div class="padding"></div>
17126
17127     <div class="entry">
17128       <div class="title">
17129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
17130       </div>
17131       <div class="date">
17132         29th November 2010
17133       </div>
17134       <div class="body">
17135         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
17136 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
17137 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
17138 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
17139 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
17140 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
17141
17142 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
17143 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
17144 will hold its
17145 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
17146 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
17147 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
17148 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
17149 vote this year.</p>
17150
17151       </div>
17152       <div class="tags">
17153
17154
17155         Tags: <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>.
17156
17157
17158       </div>
17159     </div>
17160     <div class="padding"></div>
17161
17162     <div class="entry">
17163       <div class="title">
17164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
17165       </div>
17166       <div class="date">
17167         27th November 2010
17168       </div>
17169       <div class="body">
17170         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
17171 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
17172 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
17173 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
17174 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
17175 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
17176 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
17177 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
17178
17179 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
17180 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
17181 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
17182 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
17183 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
17184 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
17185 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
17186 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
17187 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
17188 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
17189 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
17190
17191 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
17192 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
17193 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
17194 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
17195 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
17196 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
17197 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
17198 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
17199 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
17200 what is going on.</p>
17201
17202       </div>
17203       <div class="tags">
17204
17205
17206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17207
17208
17209       </div>
17210     </div>
17211     <div class="padding"></div>
17212
17213     <div class="entry">
17214       <div class="title">
17215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
17216       </div>
17217       <div class="date">
17218         22nd November 2010
17219       </div>
17220       <div class="body">
17221         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
17222 upgrade testing of the
17223 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
17224 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
17225 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
17226 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
17227
17228 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
17229
17230 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17231
17232 <blockquote><p>
17233   apache2.2-bin
17234   aptdaemon
17235   baobab
17236   binfmt-support
17237   browser-plugin-gnash
17238   cheese-common
17239   cli-common
17240   cups-pk-helper
17241   dmz-cursor-theme
17242   empathy
17243   empathy-common
17244   freedesktop-sound-theme
17245   freeglut3
17246   gconf-defaults-service
17247   gdm-themes
17248   gedit-plugins
17249   geoclue
17250   geoclue-hostip
17251   geoclue-localnet
17252   geoclue-manual
17253   geoclue-yahoo
17254   gnash
17255   gnash-common
17256   gnome
17257   gnome-backgrounds
17258   gnome-cards-data
17259   gnome-codec-install
17260   gnome-core
17261   gnome-desktop-environment
17262   gnome-disk-utility
17263   gnome-screenshot
17264   gnome-search-tool
17265   gnome-session-canberra
17266   gnome-system-log
17267   gnome-themes-extras
17268   gnome-themes-more
17269   gnome-user-share
17270   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
17271   gstreamer0.10-tools
17272   gtk2-engines
17273   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
17274   gtk2-engines-smooth
17275   hamster-applet
17276   libapache2-mod-dnssd
17277   libapr1
17278   libaprutil1
17279   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
17280   libaprutil1-ldap
17281   libart2.0-cil
17282   libboost-date-time1.42.0
17283   libboost-python1.42.0
17284   libboost-thread1.42.0
17285   libchamplain-0.4-0
17286   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
17287   libcheese-gtk18
17288   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
17289   libcryptui0
17290   libdiscid0
17291   libelf1
17292   libepc-1.0-2
17293   libepc-common
17294   libepc-ui-1.0-2
17295   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
17296   libfreerdp0
17297   libgconf2.0-cil
17298   libgdata-common
17299   libgdata7
17300   libgdu-gtk0
17301   libgee2
17302   libgeoclue0
17303   libgexiv2-0
17304   libgif4
17305   libglade2.0-cil
17306   libglib2.0-cil
17307   libgmime2.4-cil
17308   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
17309   libgnome2.24-cil
17310   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
17311   libgpod-common
17312   libgpod4
17313   libgtk2.0-cil
17314   libgtkglext1
17315   libgtksourceview2.0-common
17316   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
17317   libmono-addins0.2-cil
17318   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
17319   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
17320   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
17321   libmono-posix2.0-cil
17322   libmono-security2.0-cil
17323   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
17324   libmono-system2.0-cil
17325   libmtp8
17326   libmusicbrainz3-6
17327   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
17328   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
17329   libopal3.6.8
17330   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
17331   libpt2.6.7
17332   libpython2.6
17333   librpm1
17334   librpmio1
17335   libsdl1.2debian
17336   libsrtp0
17337   libssh-4
17338   libtelepathy-farsight0
17339   libtelepathy-glib0
17340   libtidy-0.99-0
17341   media-player-info
17342   mesa-utils
17343   mono-2.0-gac
17344   mono-gac
17345   mono-runtime
17346   nautilus-sendto
17347   nautilus-sendto-empathy
17348   p7zip-full
17349   pkg-config
17350   python-aptdaemon
17351   python-aptdaemon-gtk
17352   python-axiom
17353   python-beautifulsoup
17354   python-bugbuddy
17355   python-clientform
17356   python-coherence
17357   python-configobj
17358   python-crypto
17359   python-cupshelpers
17360   python-elementtree
17361   python-epsilon
17362   python-evolution
17363   python-feedparser
17364   python-gdata
17365   python-gdbm
17366   python-gst0.10
17367   python-gtkglext1
17368   python-gtksourceview2
17369   python-httplib2
17370   python-louie
17371   python-mako
17372   python-markupsafe
17373   python-mechanize
17374   python-nevow
17375   python-notify
17376   python-opengl
17377   python-openssl
17378   python-pam
17379   python-pkg-resources
17380   python-pyasn1
17381   python-pysqlite2
17382   python-rdflib
17383   python-serial
17384   python-tagpy
17385   python-twisted-bin
17386   python-twisted-conch
17387   python-twisted-core
17388   python-twisted-web
17389   python-utidylib
17390   python-webkit
17391   python-xdg
17392   python-zope.interface
17393   remmina
17394   remmina-plugin-data
17395   remmina-plugin-rdp
17396   remmina-plugin-vnc
17397   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
17398   rhythmbox-plugins
17399   rpm-common
17400   rpm2cpio
17401   seahorse-plugins
17402   shotwell
17403   software-center
17404   system-config-printer-udev
17405   telepathy-gabble
17406   telepathy-mission-control-5
17407   telepathy-salut
17408   tomboy
17409   totem
17410   totem-coherence
17411   totem-mozilla
17412   totem-plugins
17413   transmission-common
17414   xdg-user-dirs
17415   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
17416   xserver-xephyr
17417 </p></blockquote>
17418
17419 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17420
17421 <blockquote><p>
17422   cheese
17423   ekiga
17424   eog
17425   epiphany-extensions
17426   evolution-exchange
17427   fast-user-switch-applet
17428   file-roller
17429   gcalctool
17430   gconf-editor
17431   gdm
17432   gedit
17433   gedit-common
17434   gnome-games
17435   gnome-games-data
17436   gnome-nettool
17437   gnome-system-tools
17438   gnome-themes
17439   gnuchess
17440   gucharmap
17441   guile-1.8-libs
17442   libavahi-ui0
17443   libdmx1
17444   libgalago3
17445   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
17446   libgtksourceview2.0-0
17447   liblircclient0
17448   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
17449   libspeexdsp1
17450   libsvga1
17451   rhythmbox
17452   seahorse
17453   sound-juicer
17454   system-config-printer
17455   totem-common
17456   transmission-gtk
17457   vinagre
17458   vino
17459 </p></blockquote>
17460
17461 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17462
17463 <blockquote><p>
17464   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17465 </p></blockquote>
17466
17467 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17468
17469 <blockquote><p>
17470 [nothing]
17471 </p></blockquote>
17472
17473 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
17474
17475 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17476
17477 <blockquote><p>
17478   ksmserver
17479 </p></blockquote>
17480
17481 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17482
17483 <blockquote><p>
17484   kwin
17485   network-manager-kde
17486 </p></blockquote>
17487
17488 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17489
17490 <blockquote><p>
17491   arts
17492   dolphin
17493   freespacenotifier
17494   google-gadgets-gst
17495   google-gadgets-xul
17496   kappfinder
17497   kcalc
17498   kcharselect
17499   kde-core
17500   kde-plasma-desktop
17501   kde-standard
17502   kde-window-manager
17503   kdeartwork
17504   kdeartwork-emoticons
17505   kdeartwork-style
17506   kdeartwork-theme-icon
17507   kdebase
17508   kdebase-apps
17509   kdebase-workspace
17510   kdebase-workspace-bin
17511   kdebase-workspace-data
17512   kdeeject
17513   kdelibs
17514   kdeplasma-addons
17515   kdeutils
17516   kdewallpapers
17517   kdf
17518   kfloppy
17519   kgpg
17520   khelpcenter4
17521   kinfocenter
17522   konq-plugins-l10n
17523   konqueror-nsplugins
17524   kscreensaver
17525   kscreensaver-xsavers
17526   ktimer
17527   kwrite
17528   libgle3
17529   libkde4-ruby1.8
17530   libkonq5
17531   libkonq5-templates
17532   libnetpbm10
17533   libplasma-ruby
17534   libplasma-ruby1.8
17535   libqt4-ruby1.8
17536   marble-data
17537   marble-plugins
17538   netpbm
17539   nuvola-icon-theme
17540   plasma-dataengines-workspace
17541   plasma-desktop
17542   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
17543   plasma-runners-addons
17544   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
17545   plasma-scriptengine-python
17546   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
17547   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
17548   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
17549   plasma-scriptengines
17550   plasma-wallpapers-addons
17551   plasma-widget-folderview
17552   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
17553   ruby
17554   sweeper
17555   update-notifier-kde
17556   xscreensaver-data-extra
17557   xscreensaver-gl
17558   xscreensaver-gl-extra
17559   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
17560 </p></blockquote>
17561
17562 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17563
17564 <blockquote><p>
17565   ark
17566   google-gadgets-common
17567   google-gadgets-qt
17568   htdig
17569   kate
17570   kdebase-bin
17571   kdebase-data
17572   kdepasswd
17573   kfind
17574   klipper
17575   konq-plugins
17576   konqueror
17577   ksysguard
17578   ksysguardd
17579   libarchive1
17580   libcln6
17581   libeet1
17582   libeina-svn-06
17583   libggadget-1.0-0b
17584   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
17585   libgps19
17586   libkdecorations4
17587   libkephal4
17588   libkonq4
17589   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
17590   libkscreensaver5
17591   libksgrd4
17592   libksignalplotter4
17593   libkunitconversion4
17594   libkwineffects1a
17595   libmarblewidget4
17596   libntrack-qt4-1
17597   libntrack0
17598   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
17599   libplasmaclock4a
17600   libplasmagenericshell4
17601   libprocesscore4a
17602   libprocessui4a
17603   libqalculate5
17604   libqedje0a
17605   libqtruby4shared2
17606   libqzion0a
17607   libruby1.8
17608   libscim8c2a
17609   libsmokekdecore4-3
17610   libsmokekdeui4-3
17611   libsmokekfile3
17612   libsmokekhtml3
17613   libsmokekio3
17614   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
17615   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
17616   libsmokekparts3
17617   libsmokektexteditor3
17618   libsmokekutils3
17619   libsmokenepomuk3
17620   libsmokephonon3
17621   libsmokeplasma3
17622   libsmokeqtcore4-3
17623   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
17624   libsmokeqtgui4-3
17625   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
17626   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
17627   libsmokeqtscript4-3
17628   libsmokeqtsql4-3
17629   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
17630   libsmokeqttest4-3
17631   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
17632   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
17633   libsmokeqtxml4-3
17634   libsmokesolid3
17635   libsmokesoprano3
17636   libtaskmanager4a
17637   libtidy-0.99-0
17638   libweather-ion4a
17639   libxklavier16
17640   libxxf86misc1
17641   okteta
17642   oxygencursors
17643   plasma-dataengines-addons
17644   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
17645   plasma-widget-lancelot
17646   plasma-widgets-addons
17647   plasma-widgets-workspace
17648   polkit-kde-1
17649   ruby1.8
17650   systemsettings
17651   update-notifier-common
17652 </p></blockquote>
17653
17654 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
17655 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
17656 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
17657 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
17658
17659       </div>
17660       <div class="tags">
17661
17662
17663         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>.
17664
17665
17666       </div>
17667     </div>
17668     <div class="padding"></div>
17669
17670     <div class="entry">
17671       <div class="title">
17672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
17673       </div>
17674       <div class="date">
17675         22nd November 2010
17676       </div>
17677       <div class="body">
17678         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
17679 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
17680 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
17681 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
17682 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
17683 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
17684 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
17685 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
17686 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
17687
17688 <p>I found
17689 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
17690 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
17691 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
17692 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
17693 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
17694 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
17695
17696 <pre>
17697 #!/bin/sh
17698
17699 # Based on
17700 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
17701
17702 set -e
17703 set -x
17704
17705 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
17706     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
17707     exit 1
17708 else
17709     host="$1"
17710 fi
17711
17712 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
17713     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
17714     exit 1
17715 fi
17716
17717 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
17718 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
17719 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
17720 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
17721
17722 img=$host.img
17723 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
17724 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
17725
17726 parted $img mklabel msdos
17727 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
17728 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
17729 parted $img set 1 boot on
17730
17731 modprobe dm-mod
17732 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
17733 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
17734
17735 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
17736 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
17737 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
17738
17739 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
17740 losetup -d /dev/loop0
17741 </pre>
17742
17743 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
17744 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
17745
17746 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
17747 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
17748 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
17749 seem to work just fine.</p>
17750
17751       </div>
17752       <div class="tags">
17753
17754
17755         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>.
17756
17757
17758       </div>
17759     </div>
17760     <div class="padding"></div>
17761
17762     <div class="entry">
17763       <div class="title">
17764         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
17765       </div>
17766       <div class="date">
17767         20th November 2010
17768       </div>
17769       <div class="body">
17770         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
17771 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
17772 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
17773 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
17774
17775 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
17776 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
17777 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
17778
17779 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
17780
17781 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17782
17783 <blockquote><p>
17784   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
17785   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
17786   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
17787   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
17788   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
17789   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
17790   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
17791   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
17792   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
17793   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
17794   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
17795   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
17796   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
17797   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
17798   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
17799   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
17800   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
17801   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
17802   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
17803   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
17804   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
17805   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
17806   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
17807   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
17808   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
17809   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
17810   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
17811   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
17812   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
17813   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
17814   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
17815   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
17816   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
17817   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
17818   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
17819   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
17820   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
17821   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
17822   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
17823   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
17824   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
17825   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
17826   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
17827   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
17828   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
17829   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
17830   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
17831   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
17832   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
17833   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
17834   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
17835   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
17836   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
17837   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
17838   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
17839   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
17840   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
17841   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
17842   zip
17843 </p></blockquote>
17844
17845 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
17846
17847 <blockquote><p>
17848   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
17849   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
17850   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
17851   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
17852   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
17853   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
17854   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
17855   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
17856   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
17857   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
17858   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
17859   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
17860   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
17861   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17862   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
17863   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
17864   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17865   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
17866   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
17867   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
17868   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
17869   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
17870   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
17871   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
17872   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
17873   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
17874   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
17875   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
17876   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
17877 </p></blockquote>
17878
17879 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17880
17881 <blockquote><p>
17882   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17883 </p></blockquote>
17884
17885 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17886
17887 <blockquote><p>
17888 [nothing]
17889 </p></blockquote>
17890
17891 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
17892
17893 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17894
17895 <blockquote><p>
17896   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
17897   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
17898   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
17899   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
17900   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
17901   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
17902   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
17903   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
17904   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
17905   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
17906   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
17907   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
17908   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
17909   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
17910   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
17911   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
17912   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
17913   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
17914   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
17915   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
17916   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
17917   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
17918   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
17919   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
17920   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
17921   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
17922   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
17923   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
17924   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
17925   ttf-sazanami-gothic
17926 </p></blockquote>
17927
17928 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17929
17930 <blockquote><p>
17931   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
17932   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
17933   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
17934   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
17935   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
17936   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
17937   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
17938   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
17939   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
17940   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
17941   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
17942   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
17943   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
17944   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
17945   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
17946   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
17947   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
17948   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
17949   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
17950   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
17951   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17952   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
17953   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
17954   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
17955   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
17956   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
17957   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
17958   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
17959   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
17960   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
17961   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
17962   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
17963   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
17964 </p></blockquote>
17965
17966 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17967
17968 <blockquote><p>
17969   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
17970   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
17971   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
17972   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
17973   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
17974   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
17975   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
17976 </p></blockquote>
17977
17978 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17979
17980 <blockquote><p>
17981   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
17982 </p></blockquote>
17983
17984       </div>
17985       <div class="tags">
17986
17987
17988         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>.
17989
17990
17991       </div>
17992     </div>
17993     <div class="padding"></div>
17994
17995     <div class="entry">
17996       <div class="title">
17997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
17998       </div>
17999       <div class="date">
18000         20th November 2010
18001       </div>
18002       <div class="body">
18003         <p>Answering
18004 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
18005 call from the Gnash project</a> for
18006 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
18007 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
18008 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
18009 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
18010 releases out more often.</p>
18011
18012 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
18013 I have considered setting up a <a
18014 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
18015 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
18016 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
18017 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
18018 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
18019 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
18020 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
18021 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
18022 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
18023 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
18024 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
18025 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
18026
18027       </div>
18028       <div class="tags">
18029
18030
18031         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>.
18032
18033
18034       </div>
18035     </div>
18036     <div class="padding"></div>
18037
18038     <div class="entry">
18039       <div class="title">
18040         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
18041       </div>
18042       <div class="date">
18043          9th November 2010
18044       </div>
18045       <div class="body">
18046         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
18047
18048 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
18049 3D linked in from
18050 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
18051 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
18052
18053       </div>
18054       <div class="tags">
18055
18056
18057         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18058
18059
18060       </div>
18061     </div>
18062     <div class="padding"></div>
18063
18064     <div class="entry">
18065       <div class="title">
18066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
18067       </div>
18068       <div class="date">
18069          7th November 2010
18070       </div>
18071       <div class="body">
18072         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
18073 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
18074 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
18075 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
18076 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
18077 working using this DVD.</p>
18078
18079 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
18080 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
18081 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
18082 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
18083 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
18084 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
18085 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
18086
18087 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
18088 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
18089 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
18090 Debian archive.</p>
18091
18092 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
18093 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
18094 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
18095 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
18096 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
18097 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
18098 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
18099 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
18100 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
18101 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
18102 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
18103 free X driver should work.</p>
18104
18105 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
18106 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
18107 DVD more useful again.</p>
18108
18109       </div>
18110       <div class="tags">
18111
18112
18113         Tags: <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>.
18114
18115
18116       </div>
18117     </div>
18118     <div class="padding"></div>
18119
18120     <div class="entry">
18121       <div class="title">
18122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
18123       </div>
18124       <div class="date">
18125         24th October 2010
18126       </div>
18127       <div class="body">
18128         <p>Some updates.</p>
18129
18130 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
18131 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
18132 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
18133 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
18134 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
18135 :)</p>
18136
18137 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
18138 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
18139 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
18140 It is called
18141 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
18142 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
18143 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
18144 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
18145 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
18146 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
18147
18148 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
18149 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
18150 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
18151 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
18152 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
18153 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
18154 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
18155 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
18156 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
18157 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
18158
18159       </div>
18160       <div class="tags">
18161
18162
18163         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>.
18164
18165
18166       </div>
18167     </div>
18168     <div class="padding"></div>
18169
18170     <div class="entry">
18171       <div class="title">
18172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
18173       </div>
18174       <div class="date">
18175         19th October 2010
18176       </div>
18177       <div class="body">
18178         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
18179 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
18180 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
18181 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
18182 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
18183 AVM2 flash files.</p>
18184
18185 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
18186 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
18187 following text:</P>
18188
18189 <p><blockquote>
18190
18191   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
18192   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
18193
18194   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
18195
18196   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
18197
18198   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
18199   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
18200   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
18201   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
18202   days. The project web page is available from
18203   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
18204   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
18205   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
18206
18207   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
18208   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
18209   to get this to happen.</p>
18210
18211   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
18212   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
18213
18214 </blockquote></p>
18215
18216 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
18217 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
18218 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
18219 :)</p>
18220
18221       </div>
18222       <div class="tags">
18223
18224
18225         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18226
18227
18228       </div>
18229     </div>
18230     <div class="padding"></div>
18231
18232     <div class="entry">
18233       <div class="title">
18234         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
18235       </div>
18236       <div class="date">
18237          9th October 2010
18238       </div>
18239       <div class="body">
18240         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
18241 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
18242 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
18243 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
18244 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
18245 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
18246 robots.</p>
18247
18248 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
18249 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
18250 a few less important features too.</p>
18251
18252 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
18253 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
18254 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
18255 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
18256
18257 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
18258 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
18259 source or binary package:</p>
18260
18261 <p><ul>
18262 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
18263 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
18264 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
18265 </ul></p>
18266
18267 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
18268 please let me know.</p>
18269
18270       </div>
18271       <div class="tags">
18272
18273
18274         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
18275
18276
18277       </div>
18278     </div>
18279     <div class="padding"></div>
18280
18281     <div class="entry">
18282       <div class="title">
18283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
18284       </div>
18285       <div class="date">
18286          3rd October 2010
18287       </div>
18288       <div class="body">
18289         <p><ul>
18290
18291 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
18292 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
18293
18294 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
18295 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
18296 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
18297
18298 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
18299 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
18300 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
18301 simple setup.
18302
18303 </ul></p>
18304
18305       </div>
18306       <div class="tags">
18307
18308
18309         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18310
18311
18312       </div>
18313     </div>
18314     <div class="padding"></div>
18315
18316     <div class="entry">
18317       <div class="title">
18318         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
18319       </div>
18320       <div class="date">
18321          9th September 2010
18322       </div>
18323       <div class="body">
18324         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
18325 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
18326 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
18327 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
18328 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
18329 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
18330 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
18331 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
18332 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
18333
18334 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
18335 written:</p>
18336
18337 <blockquote>
18338 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
18339 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
18340 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
18341 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
18342 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
18343
18344 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
18345 standard.</p>
18346 </blockquote>
18347
18348 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
18349 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
18350 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
18351 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
18352
18353 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
18354 read
18355 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
18356 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
18357 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
18358 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
18359 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
18360 the issue.  The solution is to support the
18361 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
18362 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
18363 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
18364
18365       </div>
18366       <div class="tags">
18367
18368
18369         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18370
18371
18372       </div>
18373     </div>
18374     <div class="padding"></div>
18375
18376     <div class="entry">
18377       <div class="title">
18378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
18379       </div>
18380       <div class="date">
18381          4th September 2010
18382       </div>
18383       <div class="body">
18384         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
18385 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
18386 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
18387 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
18388 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
18389 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
18390 installed.</p>
18391
18392 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
18393 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
18394 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
18395 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
18396 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
18397 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
18398 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
18399 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
18400 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
18401
18402 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
18403 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
18404 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
18405 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
18406 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
18407 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
18408 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
18409 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
18410 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
18411 pages they want to visit.</p>
18412
18413 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
18414 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
18415 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
18416 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
18417 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
18418 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
18419 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
18420 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
18421 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
18422 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
18423 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
18424
18425       </div>
18426       <div class="tags">
18427
18428
18429         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18430
18431
18432       </div>
18433     </div>
18434     <div class="padding"></div>
18435
18436     <div class="entry">
18437       <div class="title">
18438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
18439       </div>
18440       <div class="date">
18441          1st September 2010
18442       </div>
18443       <div class="body">
18444         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
18445 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
18446 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
18447 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
18448 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
18449 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
18450 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
18451 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
18452 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
18453 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
18454 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
18455 drive around.</p>
18456
18457 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
18458 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
18459
18460 <p><pre>
18461 use Spykee;
18462 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
18463 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
18464 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
18465 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
18466 $spykee->left();
18467 sleep 2;
18468 $spykee->right();
18469 sleep 2;
18470 $spykee->forward();
18471 sleep 2;
18472 $spykee->back();
18473 sleep 2;
18474 $spykee->stop();
18475 </pre></p>
18476
18477 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
18478 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
18479 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
18480 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
18481 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
18482 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
18483 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
18484 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
18485 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
18486 going. :).</p>
18487
18488 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
18489 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
18490 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
18491 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
18492
18493       </div>
18494       <div class="tags">
18495
18496
18497         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
18498
18499
18500       </div>
18501     </div>
18502     <div class="padding"></div>
18503
18504     <div class="entry">
18505       <div class="title">
18506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
18507       </div>
18508       <div class="date">
18509         30th August 2010
18510       </div>
18511       <div class="body">
18512         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
18513 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
18514 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
18515 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
18516 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
18517 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
18518 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
18519
18520 <pre>
18521 % ln foo bar
18522 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
18523 %
18524 </pre>
18525
18526 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
18527 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
18528 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
18529 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
18530 nevertheless. :)</p>
18531
18532 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
18533 git from
18534 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
18535
18536       </div>
18537       <div class="tags">
18538
18539
18540         Tags: <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>.
18541
18542
18543       </div>
18544     </div>
18545     <div class="padding"></div>
18546
18547     <div class="entry">
18548       <div class="title">
18549         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
18550       </div>
18551       <div class="date">
18552         26th August 2010
18553       </div>
18554       <div class="body">
18555         <p>My file system sematics program
18556 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
18557 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
18558 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
18559 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
18560 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
18561 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
18562 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
18563 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
18564 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
18565 script:</p>
18566
18567 <pre>
18568 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
18569   mode_t retval = 0;
18570   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
18571   if (-1 != fd) {
18572     unlink(name);
18573     struct stat statbuf;
18574     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
18575       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
18576     }
18577     close(fd);
18578   }
18579   return retval;
18580 }
18581
18582 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
18583 int test_umask(void) {
18584   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
18585
18586   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
18587   mode_t newmode;
18588   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
18589     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
18590            newmode);
18591   }
18592   umask(007);
18593   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
18594     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
18595            newmode);
18596   }
18597
18598   umask (orig_umask);
18599   return 0;
18600 }
18601
18602 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
18603   [...]
18604   test_umask();
18605   return 0;
18606 }
18607 </pre>
18608
18609 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
18610
18611 <pre>
18612 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18613 info: testing symlink creation
18614 info: testing subdirectory creation
18615 info: testing fcntl locking
18616   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18617   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18618   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18619   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18620   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18621   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18622 info: testing umask effect on file creation
18623 </pre>
18624
18625 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
18626 result:</p>
18627
18628 <pre>
18629 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18630 info: testing symlink creation
18631 info: testing subdirectory creation
18632 info: testing fcntl locking
18633   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18634   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18635   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18636   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18637   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18638   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18639 info: testing umask effect on file creation
18640   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
18641   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
18642 </pre>
18643
18644 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
18645 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
18646 directory.</p>
18647
18648 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
18649 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
18650
18651 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
18652 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
18653 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
18654
18655       </div>
18656       <div class="tags">
18657
18658
18659         Tags: <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>.
18660
18661
18662       </div>
18663     </div>
18664     <div class="padding"></div>
18665
18666     <div class="entry">
18667       <div class="title">
18668         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
18669       </div>
18670       <div class="date">
18671         15th August 2010
18672       </div>
18673       <div class="body">
18674         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
18675 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
18676 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
18677 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
18678 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
18679 long time.</p>
18680
18681       </div>
18682       <div class="tags">
18683
18684
18685         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</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>.
18686
18687
18688       </div>
18689     </div>
18690     <div class="padding"></div>
18691
18692     <div class="entry">
18693       <div class="title">
18694         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
18695       </div>
18696       <div class="date">
18697          9th August 2010
18698       </div>
18699       <div class="body">
18700         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
18701 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
18702 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
18703 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
18704 generated configuration.</p>
18705
18706 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
18707 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
18708 without any manual configuration.</p>
18709
18710 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
18711 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
18712 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
18713 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
18714 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
18715 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
18716 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
18717 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
18718 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
18719 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
18720 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
18721 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
18722 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
18723 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
18724 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
18725 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
18726 use.</p>
18727
18728 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
18729 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
18730 working properly out of the box:</p>
18731
18732 <ul>
18733 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
18734 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
18735 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
18736 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
18737 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
18738 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
18739 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
18740 </ul>
18741
18742 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
18743
18744 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
18745 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
18746 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
18747 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
18748 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
18749
18750 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
18751 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
18752 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
18753 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
18754 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
18755 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
18756 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
18757 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
18758
18759 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
18760 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
18761 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
18762 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
18763 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
18764 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
18765 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
18766 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
18767 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
18768 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
18769 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
18770 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
18771 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
18772 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
18773 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
18774 current DNS domain is used.</p>
18775
18776 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
18777 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
18778 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
18779 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
18780 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
18781 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
18782 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
18783 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
18784 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
18785 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
18786 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
18787 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
18788 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
18789
18790 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
18791 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
18792 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
18793 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
18794 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
18795 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
18796 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
18797 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
18798 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
18799 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
18800 do for now. :)</p>
18801
18802 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
18803 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
18804 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
18805 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
18806 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
18807 yet.</p>
18808
18809 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
18810 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18811
18812 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
18813 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
18814 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
18815 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
18816
18817       </div>
18818       <div class="tags">
18819
18820
18821         Tags: <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>.
18822
18823
18824       </div>
18825     </div>
18826     <div class="padding"></div>
18827
18828     <div class="entry">
18829       <div class="title">
18830         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
18831       </div>
18832       <div class="date">
18833          8th August 2010
18834       </div>
18835       <div class="body">
18836         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
18837 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
18838 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
18839 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
18840 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
18841 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
18842 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
18843
18844 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
18845 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
18846 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
18847 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
18848 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
18849 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
18850 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
18851
18852 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
18853 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
18854 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
18855 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
18856 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
18857
18858 <pre>
18859 /*
18860  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
18861  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
18862  * directory.
18863  * License: GPL v2 or later
18864  *
18865  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
18866  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
18867 */
18868
18869 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
18870 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
18871 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
18872
18873 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
18874
18875 #include &lt;errno.h>
18876 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
18877 #include &lt;stdio.h>
18878 #include &lt;string.h>
18879 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
18880 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
18881 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
18882 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
18883 #include &lt;unistd.h>
18884
18885 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
18886 /*
18887  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
18888  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
18889  * below.
18890  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
18891  */
18892 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
18893 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
18894   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
18895 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
18896   char *zErrMsg;
18897   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18898   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
18899   unlink(name);
18900   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
18901   if( rc ){
18902     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
18903     sqlite3_close(db);
18904     return -1;
18905   }
18906
18907   /* create tables */
18908   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
18909   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
18910     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
18911     sqlite3_close(db);
18912     return -1;
18913   }
18914   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
18915   sqlite3_close(db);
18916   return 0;
18917 }
18918 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
18919
18920 /*
18921  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
18922  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
18923  * done in the sqlite3 library.
18924  * See also
18925  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
18926  * POSIX specification
18927  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
18928  */
18929 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
18930   struct flock fl;
18931   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18932   unlink(name);
18933   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
18934   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
18935
18936   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
18937   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
18938   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18939   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18940   fl.l_len    = 1;
18941   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18942   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18943
18944   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18945   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18946   fl.l_len    = 510;
18947   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18948   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18949
18950   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18951   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18952   fl.l_len    = 1;
18953   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18954   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18955
18956   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18957   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18958   fl.l_len    = 1;
18959   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
18960   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18961
18962   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18963   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18964   fl.l_len    = 510;
18965   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18966
18967   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
18968   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18969   fl.l_len    = 2;
18970   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18971   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18972
18973   close(fd);
18974   return 0;
18975 }
18976
18977 /*
18978  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
18979  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
18980  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
18981  * slowing down file operations.
18982  */
18983 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
18984 #define LEVELS 5
18985   char *path = strdup("test");
18986   char *dirs[LEVELS];
18987   int level;
18988   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
18989   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
18990     char *newpath = NULL;
18991     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
18992       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
18993              path, strerror(errno));
18994       break;
18995     }
18996     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
18997     free(path);
18998     path = newpath;
18999   }
19000   return 0;
19001 }
19002
19003 /*
19004  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
19005  * KDE.
19006  */
19007 int test_symlinks(void) {
19008   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
19009   unlink("symlink");
19010   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
19011     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
19012   return 0;
19013 }
19014
19015 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19016   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
19017   test_symlinks();
19018   test_subdirectory_creation();
19019 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19020   test_sqlite_open();
19021 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19022   test_gcompris_locking();
19023   return 0;
19024 }
19025 </pre>
19026
19027 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
19028 this:</p>
19029
19030 <pre>
19031 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19032 info: testing symlink creation
19033 info: testing subdirectory creation
19034 info: sqlite worked
19035 info: testing fcntl locking
19036   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19037   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19038   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19039   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19040   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19041   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19042 </pre>
19043
19044 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
19045 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
19046 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
19047 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
19048 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
19049 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
19050 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
19051 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
19052
19053 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
19054 it. :)</p>
19055
19056 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19057 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19058 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19059
19060       </div>
19061       <div class="tags">
19062
19063
19064         Tags: <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>.
19065
19066
19067       </div>
19068     </div>
19069     <div class="padding"></div>
19070
19071     <div class="entry">
19072       <div class="title">
19073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
19074       </div>
19075       <div class="date">
19076          7th August 2010
19077       </div>
19078       <div class="body">
19079         <p>A few days ago, I
19080 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
19081 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
19082 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
19083 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
19084 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
19085 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
19086 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
19087 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
19088 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
19089
19090 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
19091 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
19092 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
19093 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
19094 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
19095 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
19096 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
19097 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
19098 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
19099 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
19100 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
19101 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
19102 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
19103 gave it a IP address.</p>
19104
19105 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
19106 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
19107 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
19108 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
19109 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
19110 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19111 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
19112 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
19113
19114 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
19115 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
19116 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
19117 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
19118 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
19119 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
19120
19121 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
19122 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
19123 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
19124 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
19125 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
19126 with UID and GID values.</p>
19127
19128 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19129 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19130
19131       </div>
19132       <div class="tags">
19133
19134
19135         Tags: <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>.
19136
19137
19138       </div>
19139     </div>
19140     <div class="padding"></div>
19141
19142     <div class="entry">
19143       <div class="title">
19144         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
19145       </div>
19146       <div class="date">
19147          3rd August 2010
19148       </div>
19149       <div class="body">
19150         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
19151 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
19152 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
19153 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
19154 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
19155 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
19156 servers.</p>
19157
19158 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
19159 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
19160 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
19161 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
19162 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
19163 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
19164 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
19165 .uio.no.</p>
19166
19167 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
19168 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
19169 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
19170 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
19171 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
19172 university servers.</p>
19173
19174 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
19175 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
19176 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
19177 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
19178 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
19179 uses.</p>
19180
19181       </div>
19182       <div class="tags">
19183
19184
19185         Tags: <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>.
19186
19187
19188       </div>
19189     </div>
19190     <div class="padding"></div>
19191
19192     <div class="entry">
19193       <div class="title">
19194         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
19195       </div>
19196       <div class="date">
19197         27th July 2010
19198       </div>
19199       <div class="body">
19200         <p>I discovered this while doing
19201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
19202 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
19203 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
19204 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
19205 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
19206
19207 <p>An example is from todays
19208 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
19209 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
19210 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
19211 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
19212 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
19213 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
19214 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
19215
19216 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
19217
19218 <blockquote><pre>
19219 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
19220  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
19221   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
19222 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
19223  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
19224 </pre></blockquote>
19225
19226 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
19227 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
19228 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
19229 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
19230 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
19231 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
19232 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
19233 of dependency loops.</p>
19234
19235 <p>Thanks to
19236 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
19237 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
19238 dependencies
19239 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
19240 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
19241
19242 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
19243 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
19244 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
19245 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
19246 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
19247 it.</p>
19248
19249       </div>
19250       <div class="tags">
19251
19252
19253         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>.
19254
19255
19256       </div>
19257     </div>
19258     <div class="padding"></div>
19259
19260     <div class="entry">
19261       <div class="title">
19262         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
19263       </div>
19264       <div class="date">
19265         27th July 2010
19266       </div>
19267       <div class="body">
19268         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
19269 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
19270 completed.</p>
19271
19272 <blockquote>
19273 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
19274 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
19275 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
19276 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
19277 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
19278 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
19279 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
19280 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
19281
19282 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
19283 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
19284 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
19285
19286 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
19287 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
19288 much.</p>
19289
19290 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
19291
19292 <ul>
19293 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
19294 <ul>
19295   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
19296          combination with some new artwork
19297   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
19298   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
19299   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
19300   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
19301   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
19302   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
19303   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
19304   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
19305   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
19306 </ul></li>
19307 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
19308     Enabled for:
19309 <ul>
19310   <li>PAM
19311   <li>LDAP
19312   <li>IMAP
19313   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
19314 </ul>
19315 </li>
19316 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
19317 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
19318     fetched from LDAP.</li>
19319 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
19320 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
19321 </ul>
19322 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
19323
19324 <ul>
19325 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
19326     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
19327     for testing.</li>
19328 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
19329     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
19330     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
19331 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
19332 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
19333 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
19334 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
19335     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
19336 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
19337     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
19338     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
19339 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
19340     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
19341     and help out with translations.</li>
19342 </ul>
19343
19344 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
19345
19346 <ul>
19347 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
19348 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
19349 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19350 </ul>
19351 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
19352
19353 <ul>
19354 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
19355 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
19356 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19357 </ul>
19358
19359 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
19360 get closer to the final release.</p>
19361
19362 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
19363
19364 <ul>
19365 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19366 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19367 </ul>
19368
19369 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
19370 <ul>
19371 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19372 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19373 </ul>
19374 <p>How to report bugs:
19375 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
19376
19377 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
19378 </blockquote>
19379
19380       </div>
19381       <div class="tags">
19382
19383
19384         Tags: <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>.
19385
19386
19387       </div>
19388     </div>
19389     <div class="padding"></div>
19390
19391     <div class="entry">
19392       <div class="title">
19393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
19394       </div>
19395       <div class="date">
19396         25th July 2010
19397       </div>
19398       <div class="body">
19399         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
19400 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
19401 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
19402 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
19403 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
19404
19405 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
19406 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
19407 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
19408 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
19409 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
19410 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
19411 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
19412
19413 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
19414 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
19415 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
19416 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
19417 up. :)</p>
19418
19419 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
19420 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
19421 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
19422
19423 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
19424 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
19425 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
19426 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
19427 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
19428 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
19429 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
19430 release another day.</p>
19431
19432 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
19433 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19434
19435       </div>
19436       <div class="tags">
19437
19438
19439         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
19440
19441
19442       </div>
19443     </div>
19444     <div class="padding"></div>
19445
19446     <div class="entry">
19447       <div class="title">
19448         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
19449       </div>
19450       <div class="date">
19451         18th July 2010
19452       </div>
19453       <div class="body">
19454         <p>Thanks to
19455 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
19456 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
19457 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
19458 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
19459 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
19460 only available from the development server, until more experience is
19461 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
19462
19463 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
19464 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
19465 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
19466 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
19467 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
19468 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
19469 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
19470
19471       </div>
19472       <div class="tags">
19473
19474
19475         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19476
19477
19478       </div>
19479     </div>
19480     <div class="padding"></div>
19481
19482     <div class="entry">
19483       <div class="title">
19484         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
19485       </div>
19486       <div class="date">
19487         17th July 2010
19488       </div>
19489       <div class="body">
19490         <p>This is a
19491 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
19492 on my
19493 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
19494 work</a> on
19495 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
19496 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
19497
19498 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
19499 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
19500 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
19501 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
19502
19503 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
19504 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
19505 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
19506
19507 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
19508
19509 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
19510 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
19511 the web.
19512
19513 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
19514 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
19515 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
19516 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
19517 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
19518 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
19519
19520 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
19521 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
19522 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
19523 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
19524 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
19525 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
19526 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
19527 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
19528 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
19529 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
19530 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
19531 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
19532 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
19533 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
19534 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
19535 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
19536
19537 <blockquote><pre>
19538 ldapsearch -h ldap \
19539   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
19540   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
19541   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
19542   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
19543   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
19544   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
19545
19546 ldapsearch -h ldap \
19547   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
19548   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
19549   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
19550   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
19551   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
19552 </pre></blockquote>
19553
19554 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
19555 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
19556 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
19557 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19558 also exist.</p>
19559
19560 <blockquote><pre>
19561 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19562 objectclass: top
19563 objectclass: dnsdomain
19564 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19565 dc: tjener
19566 arecord: 10.0.2.2
19567 associateddomain: tjener.intern
19568
19569 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19570 objectclass: top
19571 objectclass: dnsdomain2
19572 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19573 dc: 2
19574 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
19575 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
19576 </pre></blockquote>
19577
19578 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
19579 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
19580 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
19581 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
19582 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
19583 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
19584 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
19585 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
19586 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
19587 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
19588 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
19589 instead.</p>
19590
19591 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
19592 like this:</p>
19593
19594 <blockquote><pre>
19595 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
19596   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
19597   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
19598   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
19599   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
19600   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
19601
19602 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
19603   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
19604 </pre></blockquote>
19605
19606 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
19607 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
19608 reverse lookups.</p>
19609
19610 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
19611 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
19612 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
19613 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
19614
19615 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
19616 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
19617 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
19618
19619 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
19620 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
19621 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
19622 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
19623 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
19624
19625 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
19626 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
19627 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
19628 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
19629 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
19630
19631 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
19632 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
19633 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
19634 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
19635 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
19636 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
19637
19638 <blockquote><pre>
19639 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
19640     SUP top
19641     AUXILIARY
19642     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
19643           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
19644           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
19645           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
19646           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
19647     ))
19648 </pre></blockquote>
19649
19650 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
19651 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
19652 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
19653 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
19654 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
19655 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
19656
19657 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
19658
19659 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
19660 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
19661 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
19662 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
19663 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
19664
19665 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
19666 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
19667 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
19668 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
19669
19670 <blockquote><pre>
19671 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
19672 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
19673 </pre></blockquote>
19674
19675 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
19676 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
19677 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
19678 search result is this entry:</p>
19679
19680 <blockquote><pre>
19681 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19682 cn: dhcp
19683 objectClass: top
19684 objectClass: dhcpServer
19685 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19686 </pre></blockquote>
19687
19688 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
19689 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
19690 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
19691 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
19692 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
19693 The search result is this entry:</p>
19694
19695 <blockquote><pre>
19696 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19697 cn: DHCP Config
19698 objectClass: top
19699 objectClass: dhcpService
19700 objectClass: dhcpOptions
19701 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19702 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
19703 dhcpStatements: authoritative
19704 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
19705 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
19706 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
19707 </pre></blockquote>
19708
19709 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
19710 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
19711 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
19712 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
19713 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
19714 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
19715 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
19716 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
19717 related computer objects.</p>
19718
19719 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
19720 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
19721 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
19722 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
19723 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
19724 like:</p>
19725
19726 <blockquote><pre>
19727 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19728 cn: hostname
19729 objectClass: top
19730 objectClass: dhcpHost
19731 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19732 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
19733 </pre></blockquote>
19734
19735 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
19736 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
19737 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
19738 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
19739 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
19740 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
19741 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
19742 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
19743 structural object class.
19744
19745 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
19746
19747 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
19748 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
19749 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
19750 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
19751 in the configuration.</p>
19752
19753 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
19754 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
19755 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
19756 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
19757 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
19758 structure.</p>
19759
19760 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
19761 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
19762
19763 <blockquote><pre>
19764 ou=services
19765   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
19766     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
19767     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
19768       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
19769         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
19770     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
19771       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
19772         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
19773     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
19774       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
19775 </pre></blockquote>
19776
19777 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
19778 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
19779 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
19780 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
19781
19782 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
19783 like this:</p>
19784
19785 <blockquote><pre>
19786 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19787 dc: hostname
19788 objectClass: top
19789 objectClass: dhcpHost
19790 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19791 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
19792 associateddomain: hostname.intern
19793 arecord: 10.11.12.13
19794 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19795 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
19796 </pre></blockquote>
19797
19798 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
19799 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
19800 auxiliary object class.</p>
19801
19802       </div>
19803       <div class="tags">
19804
19805
19806         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19807
19808
19809       </div>
19810     </div>
19811     <div class="padding"></div>
19812
19813     <div class="entry">
19814       <div class="title">
19815         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
19816       </div>
19817       <div class="date">
19818         14th July 2010
19819       </div>
19820       <div class="body">
19821         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
19822 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
19823 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
19824 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
19825 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
19826
19827 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
19828 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
19829
19830 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
19831 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
19832 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
19833 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
19834 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
19835 to a slave DNS server.</p>
19836
19837 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
19838 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
19839 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
19840 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
19841 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
19842 seem to work.</p>
19843
19844 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
19845 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
19846 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
19847 this:</p>
19848
19849 <blockquote><pre>
19850   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19851   cn: hostname
19852   objectClass: dhcphost
19853   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19854   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
19855   associateddomain: hostname.intern
19856   arecord: 10.11.12.13
19857   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19858   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
19859   ldapconfigsound: Y
19860 </pre></blockquote>
19861
19862 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
19863 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
19864 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
19865 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
19866
19867 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
19868 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
19869 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
19870 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
19871 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
19872 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
19873 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
19874 might be a good place to put it.</p>
19875
19876 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19877 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19878
19879       </div>
19880       <div class="tags">
19881
19882
19883         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19884
19885
19886       </div>
19887     </div>
19888     <div class="padding"></div>
19889
19890     <div class="entry">
19891       <div class="title">
19892         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
19893       </div>
19894       <div class="date">
19895         11th July 2010
19896       </div>
19897       <div class="body">
19898         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
19899 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
19900 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
19901 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
19902
19903 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
19904 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
19905 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
19906 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
19907 LTSP clients.</p>
19908
19909 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
19910 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
19911 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
19912
19913 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
19914 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
19915 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
19916
19917 <blockquote><pre>
19918 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
19919 #
19920 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
19921 #
19922 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
19923 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
19924 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
19925 #
19926 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
19927 # existence of attribute names.
19928 #
19929 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
19930 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
19931 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
19932 #
19933 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
19934 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
19935 #
19936 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
19937 #     SUP top
19938 #     AUXILIARY
19939 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
19940
19941 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
19942 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
19943     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
19944     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
19945         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
19946         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
19947             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
19948             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
19949             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
19950             # bass value on to clients
19951             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
19952         done
19953     done
19954 fi
19955 </pre></blockquote>
19956
19957 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
19958 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
19959 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
19960 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
19961 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
19962
19963 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19964 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19965
19966 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
19967 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
19968 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
19969 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
19970 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
19971 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
19972
19973       </div>
19974       <div class="tags">
19975
19976
19977         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19978
19979
19980       </div>
19981     </div>
19982     <div class="padding"></div>
19983
19984     <div class="entry">
19985       <div class="title">
19986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
19987       </div>
19988       <div class="date">
19989          9th July 2010
19990       </div>
19991       <div class="body">
19992         <p>Since
19993 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
19994 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
19995 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
19996 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
19997 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
19998 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
19999 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
20000 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
20001 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
20002 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
20003 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
20004 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
20005 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
20006
20007       </div>
20008       <div class="tags">
20009
20010
20011         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20012
20013
20014       </div>
20015     </div>
20016     <div class="padding"></div>
20017
20018     <div class="entry">
20019       <div class="title">
20020         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
20021       </div>
20022       <div class="date">
20023          3rd July 2010
20024       </div>
20025       <div class="body">
20026         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
20027 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
20028 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
20029 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
20030 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
20031 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
20032 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
20033 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
20034
20035 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
20036 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
20037 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
20038 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
20039 publish the difference.</p>
20040
20041 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
20042
20043 <blockquote><p>
20044   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
20045   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
20046   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
20047   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
20048   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
20049   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
20050   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
20051   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
20052 </p></blockquote>
20053
20054 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
20055
20056 <blockquote><p>
20057   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
20058   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
20059   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
20060   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
20061   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
20062   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
20063   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
20064   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
20065   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
20066   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
20067   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
20068   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
20069   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
20070   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
20071   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
20072   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
20073   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
20074   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
20075   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
20076   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
20077 </p></blockquote>
20078
20079 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
20080
20081 <blockquote><p>
20082   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
20083   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
20084   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20085   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20086   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
20087   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
20088   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
20089   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20090   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20091   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20092   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20093   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
20094   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
20095   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
20096   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
20097   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
20098   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
20099   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
20100   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
20101   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
20102   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
20103 </p></blockquote>
20104
20105 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
20106
20107 <blockquote><p>
20108   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
20109   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
20110   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
20111 </p></blockquote>
20112
20113 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
20114 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
20115 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
20116 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
20117 the difference somewhat.
20118
20119       </div>
20120       <div class="tags">
20121
20122
20123         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>.
20124
20125
20126       </div>
20127     </div>
20128     <div class="padding"></div>
20129
20130     <div class="entry">
20131       <div class="title">
20132         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
20133       </div>
20134       <div class="date">
20135          1st July 2010
20136       </div>
20137       <div class="body">
20138         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
20139 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
20140 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
20141 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
20142 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
20143 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
20144 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
20145 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
20146 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
20147
20148 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
20149
20150 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
20151 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
20152 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
20153 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
20154 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
20155 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
20156 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
20157 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
20158 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
20159 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
20160 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
20161 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
20162 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
20163 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
20164 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
20165
20166 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
20167
20168 <blockquote><pre>
20169 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
20170 </pre></blockquote>
20171
20172 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
20173 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
20174 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
20175 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
20176 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
20177 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
20178 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
20179 on how to get this working.</p>
20180
20181 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
20182 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
20183 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
20184 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
20185 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
20186 instructions I found in the
20187 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
20188 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
20189
20190 <blockquote><pre>
20191         debug-level             0
20192         reload-count            unlimited
20193         paranoia                no
20194
20195         enable-cache            passwd          yes
20196         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
20197         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
20198         suggested-size          passwd          211
20199         check-files             passwd          yes
20200         persistent              passwd          yes
20201         shared                  passwd          yes
20202         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
20203         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
20204
20205         enable-cache            group           yes
20206         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
20207         negative-time-to-live   group           20
20208         suggested-size          group           211
20209         check-files             group           yes
20210         persistent              group           yes
20211         shared                  group           yes
20212         max-db-size             group           33554432
20213         auto-propagate          group           yes
20214
20215         enable-cache            hosts           no
20216         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
20217         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
20218         suggested-size          hosts           211
20219         check-files             hosts           yes
20220         persistent              hosts           yes
20221         shared                  hosts           yes
20222         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
20223
20224         enable-cache            services        yes
20225         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
20226         negative-time-to-live   services        20
20227         suggested-size          services        211
20228         check-files             services        yes
20229         persistent              services        yes
20230         shared                  services        yes
20231         max-db-size             services        33554432
20232 </pre></blockquote>
20233
20234 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
20235 automatically like the one provided in
20236 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
20237 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
20238 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
20239 look like this:</p>
20240
20241 <blockquote><pre>
20242 passwd:         files ldap
20243 group:          files ldap
20244 shadow:         files ldap
20245 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
20246 networks:       files
20247 protocols:      files
20248 services:       files
20249 ethers:         files
20250 rpc:            files
20251 netgroup:       files ldap
20252 </pre></blockquote>
20253
20254 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
20255 shadow and netgroup.</p>
20256
20257 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
20258 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
20259 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
20260 attributes cached.
20261
20262 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
20263   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
20264
20265 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
20266 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
20267 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
20268 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
20269 discovered sssd.</p>
20270
20271 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
20272
20273 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
20274 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
20275 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
20276 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
20277 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
20278 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
20279 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
20280 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
20281 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
20282 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
20283 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
20284 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
20285 version 1.2 is now in testing.
20286
20287 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
20288 roaming setup I want</p>
20289
20290 <blockquote><pre>
20291 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
20292 </pre></blockquote>
20293
20294 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
20295 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
20296
20297 <blockquote><pre>
20298 [sssd]
20299 config_file_version = 2
20300 reconnection_retries = 3
20301 sbus_timeout = 30
20302 services = nss, pam
20303 domains = INTERN
20304
20305 [nss]
20306 filter_groups = root
20307 filter_users = root
20308 reconnection_retries = 3
20309
20310 [pam]
20311 reconnection_retries = 3
20312
20313 [domain/INTERN]
20314 enumerate = false
20315 cache_credentials = true
20316
20317 id_provider = ldap
20318 auth_provider = ldap
20319 chpass_provider = ldap
20320
20321 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
20322 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20323 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
20324 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
20325 </pre></blockquote>
20326
20327 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
20328 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
20329
20330 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
20331 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
20332 modify it manually.</p>
20333
20334 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20335 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20336
20337       </div>
20338       <div class="tags">
20339
20340
20341         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20342
20343
20344       </div>
20345     </div>
20346     <div class="padding"></div>
20347
20348     <div class="entry">
20349       <div class="title">
20350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20351       </div>
20352       <div class="date">
20353         28th June 2010
20354       </div>
20355       <div class="body">
20356         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
20357 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
20358 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
20359 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
20360 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
20361 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
20362 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
20363 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
20364 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
20365 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
20366
20367 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
20368 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
20369 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
20370 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
20371 released.</p>
20372
20373 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
20374 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
20375 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
20376 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
20377
20378 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
20379 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20380
20381 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
20382 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
20383 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
20384 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
20385 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
20386
20387       </div>
20388       <div class="tags">
20389
20390
20391         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20392
20393
20394       </div>
20395     </div>
20396     <div class="padding"></div>
20397
20398     <div class="entry">
20399       <div class="title">
20400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
20401       </div>
20402       <div class="date">
20403         24th June 2010
20404       </div>
20405       <div class="body">
20406         <p>A while back, I
20407 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
20408 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
20409 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
20410 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
20411
20412 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
20413 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
20414 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
20415 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
20416
20417 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
20418 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
20419 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
20420 Debian Edu.</p>
20421
20422 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
20423 the
20424 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
20425 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
20426 available today from IETF.</p>
20427
20428 <pre>
20429 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
20430 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
20431 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
20432  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
20433         NAME 'dhcpHost'
20434         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
20435 -       SUP top
20436 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
20437         MUST cn
20438         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
20439         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
20440 </pre>
20441
20442 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
20443 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
20444 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
20445
20446 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20447 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20448
20449       </div>
20450       <div class="tags">
20451
20452
20453         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20454
20455
20456       </div>
20457     </div>
20458     <div class="padding"></div>
20459
20460     <div class="entry">
20461       <div class="title">
20462         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
20463       </div>
20464       <div class="date">
20465         16th June 2010
20466       </div>
20467       <div class="body">
20468         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
20469 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
20470 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
20471 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
20472 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
20473 this:
20474
20475 <blockquote><pre>
20476 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20477 tasksel --new-install
20478 </pre></blockquote>
20479
20480 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
20481 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
20482 any output what so ever.
20483
20484 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
20485 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
20486 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
20487 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
20488 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
20489 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
20490 code like this:
20491
20492 <blockquote><pre>
20493 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20494 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
20495 $cmd
20496 </pre></blockquote>
20497
20498 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
20499 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
20500 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
20501 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
20502 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
20503 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
20504 installation.</p>
20505
20506 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
20507 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
20508 like this.</p>
20509
20510       </div>
20511       <div class="tags">
20512
20513
20514         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>.
20515
20516
20517       </div>
20518     </div>
20519     <div class="padding"></div>
20520
20521     <div class="entry">
20522       <div class="title">
20523         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
20524       </div>
20525       <div class="date">
20526         13th June 2010
20527       </div>
20528       <div class="body">
20529         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
20530 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
20531 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
20532 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
20533 pages.</p>
20534
20535 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
20536 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
20537 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
20538 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
20539 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
20540 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
20541 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
20542 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
20543 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
20544 see how the project is doing.</p>
20545
20546 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
20547 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
20548 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
20549 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
20550 Windows.  This is great.</p>
20551
20552       </div>
20553       <div class="tags">
20554
20555
20556         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
20557
20558
20559       </div>
20560     </div>
20561     <div class="padding"></div>
20562
20563     <div class="entry">
20564       <div class="title">
20565         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
20566       </div>
20567       <div class="date">
20568         13th June 2010
20569       </div>
20570       <div class="body">
20571         <p>My
20572 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
20573 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
20574 finally made the upgrade logs available from
20575 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
20576 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
20577 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
20578 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
20579
20580 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
20581 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
20582 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
20583 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
20584 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
20585 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
20586 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
20587 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
20588
20589 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
20590 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
20591 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
20592 too surprising.</p>
20593
20594 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
20595 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
20596 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
20597 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
20598 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
20599 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
20600 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
20601 continue.</p>
20602
20603 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
20604 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
20605   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
20606   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
20607   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
20608   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
20609   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
20610   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20611   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20612   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
20613   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
20614   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
20615   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
20616   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20617   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20618   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20619   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20620   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20621   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
20622   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
20623   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
20624   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
20625   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
20626   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
20627   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
20628   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
20629   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
20630   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
20631   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
20632   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
20633
20634 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
20635
20636 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
20637   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
20638   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
20639   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
20640   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
20641   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
20642   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
20643   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
20644   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
20645   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
20646   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
20647   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
20648   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
20649   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
20650   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
20651   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
20652   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
20653   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
20654   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
20655   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
20656   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
20657   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
20658   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
20659   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
20660   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
20661   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
20662   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
20663   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
20664   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
20665   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20666   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
20667   zip</p>
20668
20669 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
20670
20671 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
20672   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
20673   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
20674   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
20675   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
20676   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
20677   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20678   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20679   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
20680   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
20681   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
20682   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
20683   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20684   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20685   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20686   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20687   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20688   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
20689   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
20690   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
20691   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
20692   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
20693   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
20694   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
20695   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
20696   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
20697   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
20698   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
20699
20700 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
20701 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
20702   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
20703   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
20704   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
20705   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
20706   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
20707   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
20708   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
20709   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
20710   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
20711   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
20712   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
20713   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
20714   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
20715   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
20716   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
20717   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
20718   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
20719   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
20720   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
20721   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
20722   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
20723   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
20724   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
20725   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
20726   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
20727   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
20728   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
20729   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
20730   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
20731   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
20732   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
20733   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
20734   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
20735   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20736   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
20737   xulrunner-1.9</p>
20738
20739
20740       </div>
20741       <div class="tags">
20742
20743
20744         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>.
20745
20746
20747       </div>
20748     </div>
20749     <div class="padding"></div>
20750
20751     <div class="entry">
20752       <div class="title">
20753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
20754       </div>
20755       <div class="date">
20756         11th June 2010
20757       </div>
20758       <div class="body">
20759         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
20760 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
20761 have been discovered and reported in the process
20762 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
20763 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
20764 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
20765 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
20766 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
20767
20768 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
20769 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
20770 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
20771 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
20772 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
20773 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
20774
20775 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
20776 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
20777 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
20778 is created.  The bug report
20779 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
20780 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
20781 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
20782 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
20783 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
20784 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
20785 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
20786 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
20787 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
20788 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
20789 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
20790 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
20791 Debian Squeeze.</p>
20792
20793 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
20794 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
20795 trick:</p>
20796
20797 <blockquote><pre>
20798 #!/bin/sh
20799 set -ex
20800
20801 if [ "$1" ] ; then
20802     desktop=$1
20803 else
20804     desktop=gnome
20805 fi
20806
20807 from=lenny
20808 to=squeeze
20809
20810 exec &lt; /dev/null
20811 unset LANG
20812 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
20813 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
20814 fuser -mv .
20815 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
20816 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
20817 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
20818 #!/bin/sh
20819 exit 101
20820 EOF
20821 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
20822 exit_cleanup() {
20823     umount $tmpdir/proc
20824 }
20825 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
20826 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
20827 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
20828
20829 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
20830
20831 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
20832 # to return the correct answers.
20833 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
20834     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
20835
20836 # Include the desktop and laptop task
20837 for test in desktop laptop ; do
20838     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
20839 #!/bin/sh
20840 exit 2
20841 EOF
20842     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
20843 done
20844
20845 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20846 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
20847 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
20848 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
20849
20850 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
20851 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
20852 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
20853 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
20854 fuser -mv
20855 </pre></blockquote>
20856
20857 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
20858 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
20859 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
20860 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
20861 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
20862 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
20863
20864 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
20865 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
20866 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
20867 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
20868 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
20869 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
20870 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
20871
20872 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
20873 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
20874 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
20875 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
20876 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
20877 packages.</p>
20878
20879       </div>
20880       <div class="tags">
20881
20882
20883         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>.
20884
20885
20886       </div>
20887     </div>
20888     <div class="padding"></div>
20889
20890     <div class="entry">
20891       <div class="title">
20892         <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>
20893       </div>
20894       <div class="date">
20895          6th June 2010
20896       </div>
20897       <div class="body">
20898         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
20899 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
20900 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
20901 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
20902 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
20903 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
20904 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
20905
20906 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
20907 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
20908 COLUMNS):</p>
20909
20910 <blockquote><pre>
20911 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
20912 previous=N
20913 PREVLEVEL=
20914 RUNLEVEL=
20915 runlevel=S
20916 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
20917 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
20918 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
20919 </pre></blockquote>
20920
20921 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
20922 script.</p>
20923
20924 <blockquote><pre>
20925 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
20926 previous=N
20927 PREVLEVEL=N
20928 RUNLEVEL=S
20929 runlevel=S
20930 </pre></blockquote>
20931
20932 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
20933 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
20934 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
20935
20936 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
20937 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
20938 choice.</p>
20939
20940       </div>
20941       <div class="tags">
20942
20943
20944         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>.
20945
20946
20947       </div>
20948     </div>
20949     <div class="padding"></div>
20950
20951     <div class="entry">
20952       <div class="title">
20953         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
20954       </div>
20955       <div class="date">
20956          6th June 2010
20957       </div>
20958       <div class="body">
20959         <p>Via the
20960 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
20961 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
20962 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
20963 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
20964 following the standards wars of today.</p>
20965
20966       </div>
20967       <div class="tags">
20968
20969
20970         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>.
20971
20972
20973       </div>
20974     </div>
20975     <div class="padding"></div>
20976
20977     <div class="entry">
20978       <div class="title">
20979         <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>
20980       </div>
20981       <div class="date">
20982          3rd June 2010
20983       </div>
20984       <div class="body">
20985         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
20986 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
20987 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
20988 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
20989 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
20990
20991 <blockquote><pre>
20992 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
20993   vendor                    count
20994   Dell Computer Corporation     1
20995     PowerEdge 1750              1
20996   IBM                           1
20997     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
20998   Intel                         2
20999   [no-dmi-info]                 3
21000 maintainer:~#
21001 </pre></blockquote>
21002
21003 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
21004 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
21005 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
21006 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
21007 option to list the individual machines.</p>
21008
21009 <p>A larger list is
21010 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
21011 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
21012 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
21013 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
21014 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
21015 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
21016 collector.</p>
21017
21018       </div>
21019       <div class="tags">
21020
21021
21022         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>.
21023
21024
21025       </div>
21026     </div>
21027     <div class="padding"></div>
21028
21029     <div class="entry">
21030       <div class="title">
21031         <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>
21032       </div>
21033       <div class="date">
21034          1st June 2010
21035       </div>
21036       <div class="body">
21037         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
21038 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
21039 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
21040 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
21041 wait.</p>
21042
21043 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
21044 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
21045 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
21046 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
21047 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
21048 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
21049
21050 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
21051 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
21052 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
21053 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
21054 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
21055 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
21056 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
21057 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
21058
21059 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
21060
21061       </div>
21062       <div class="tags">
21063
21064
21065         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>.
21066
21067
21068       </div>
21069     </div>
21070     <div class="padding"></div>
21071
21072     <div class="entry">
21073       <div class="title">
21074         <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>
21075       </div>
21076       <div class="date">
21077         27th May 2010
21078       </div>
21079       <div class="body">
21080         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
21081 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
21082 issues are known and should be solved:
21083
21084 <p><ul>
21085
21086 <li>The wicd package seen to
21087 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
21088 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
21089 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
21090 seem to be on the case.</li>
21091
21092 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
21093 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
21094 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
21095 maintainer is on the case.</li>
21096
21097 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
21098 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
21099 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
21100 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
21101 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
21102 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
21103 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
21104 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
21105
21106 </ul></p>
21107
21108 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
21109 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
21110 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
21111 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
21112
21113 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21114 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21115 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21116 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21117
21118 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
21119
21120       </div>
21121       <div class="tags">
21122
21123
21124         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>.
21125
21126
21127       </div>
21128     </div>
21129     <div class="padding"></div>
21130
21131     <div class="entry">
21132       <div class="title">
21133         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
21134       </div>
21135       <div class="date">
21136         22nd May 2010
21137       </div>
21138       <div class="body">
21139         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
21140 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
21141 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
21142 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
21143
21144 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
21145 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
21146 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
21147 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
21148 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
21149 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
21150 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
21151 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
21152 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
21153 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
21154 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
21155 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
21156 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
21157 going to work.</p>
21158
21159 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
21160 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
21161 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
21162 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
21163 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
21164 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
21165 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
21166 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
21167 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
21168 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
21169 Edu.</p>
21170
21171 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
21172 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
21173 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
21174 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
21175 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
21176 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
21177
21178 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
21179 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
21180
21181       </div>
21182       <div class="tags">
21183
21184
21185         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>.
21186
21187
21188       </div>
21189     </div>
21190     <div class="padding"></div>
21191
21192     <div class="entry">
21193       <div class="title">
21194         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
21195       </div>
21196       <div class="date">
21197         19th May 2010
21198       </div>
21199       <div class="body">
21200         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
21201 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
21202 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
21203 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
21204 into unstable.  The
21205 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
21206 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
21207 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
21208 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
21209 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
21210 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
21211 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
21212
21213 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
21214 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
21215 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
21216 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
21217 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
21218 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
21219 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
21220 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
21221
21222 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
21223 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
21224 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
21225 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
21226 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
21227 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
21228 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
21229
21230 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
21231 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
21232 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
21233 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
21234 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
21235 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
21236 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
21237 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
21238 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
21239 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
21240 on the home directory servers.</p>
21241
21242 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
21243 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
21244 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
21245 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
21246 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
21247 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
21248
21249 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21250 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21251
21252       </div>
21253       <div class="tags">
21254
21255
21256         Tags: <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>.
21257
21258
21259       </div>
21260     </div>
21261     <div class="padding"></div>
21262
21263     <div class="entry">
21264       <div class="title">
21265         <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>
21266       </div>
21267       <div class="date">
21268         14th May 2010
21269       </div>
21270       <div class="body">
21271         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
21272 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
21273 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
21274 expected, if I am to believe the
21275 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
21276 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
21277 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
21278 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
21279 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
21280 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
21281 version.</p>
21282
21283 More information about
21284 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21285 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
21286 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
21287 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
21288
21289 <blockquote><pre>
21290 CONCURRENCY=none
21291 </pre></blockquote>
21292
21293 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21294 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21295 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21296 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21297
21298       </div>
21299       <div class="tags">
21300
21301
21302         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>.
21303
21304
21305       </div>
21306     </div>
21307     <div class="padding"></div>
21308
21309     <div class="entry">
21310       <div class="title">
21311         <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>
21312       </div>
21313       <div class="date">
21314         14th May 2010
21315       </div>
21316       <div class="body">
21317         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
21318 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
21319 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
21320 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
21321 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
21322 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
21323 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
21324 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
21325
21326 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
21327 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
21328 this on the collector host:</p>
21329
21330 <blockquote><pre>
21331 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
21332 </pre></blockquote>
21333
21334 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
21335 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
21336
21337 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
21338 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
21339 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
21340 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
21341 written yet.</p>
21342
21343       </div>
21344       <div class="tags">
21345
21346
21347         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>.
21348
21349
21350       </div>
21351     </div>
21352     <div class="padding"></div>
21353
21354     <div class="entry">
21355       <div class="title">
21356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
21357       </div>
21358       <div class="date">
21359         13th May 2010
21360       </div>
21361       <div class="body">
21362         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
21363 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
21364 has been
21365 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
21366
21367 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
21368 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
21369 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
21370 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
21371 based boot system.  Tollef is
21372 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
21373 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
21374 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
21375 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
21376 at the moment do not.</p>
21377
21378 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
21379 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
21380 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
21381 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
21382 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
21383 way forward.</p>
21384
21385 <p>In the mean time, based on the
21386 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
21387 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
21388 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
21389 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
21390 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
21391 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
21392 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
21393 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
21394
21395       </div>
21396       <div class="tags">
21397
21398
21399         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21400
21401
21402       </div>
21403     </div>
21404     <div class="padding"></div>
21405
21406     <div class="entry">
21407       <div class="title">
21408         <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>
21409       </div>
21410       <div class="date">
21411          6th May 2010
21412       </div>
21413       <div class="body">
21414         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
21415 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
21416 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
21417 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
21418 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21419 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
21420 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
21421
21422 <blockquote><pre>
21423 CONCURRENCY=makefile
21424 </pre></blockquote>
21425
21426 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
21427 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
21428 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
21429 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
21430 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
21431 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
21432 make this happen.</p>
21433
21434 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
21435 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
21436 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
21437 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
21438 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
21439
21440 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
21441 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
21442 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
21443 fix the remaining issues.</p>
21444
21445 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21446 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21447 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21448 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21449
21450       </div>
21451       <div class="tags">
21452
21453
21454         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>.
21455
21456
21457       </div>
21458     </div>
21459     <div class="padding"></div>
21460
21461     <div class="entry">
21462       <div class="title">
21463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
21464       </div>
21465       <div class="date">
21466          2nd May 2010
21467       </div>
21468       <div class="body">
21469         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
21470 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
21471 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
21472
21473 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
21474 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
21475 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
21476 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
21477 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
21478
21479 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
21480 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
21481
21482 <blockquote><pre>
21483 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
21484 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
21485 Password expires                                        : never
21486 Password inactive                                       : never
21487 Account expires                                         : never
21488 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
21489 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
21490 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
21491 root@tjener:~#
21492 </pre></blockquote>
21493
21494 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
21495 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
21496 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
21497 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
21498 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
21499 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
21500
21501 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
21502 intended:</p>
21503
21504 <blockquote><pre>
21505 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
21506 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
21507 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
21508 Password expires                                        : never
21509 Password inactive                                       : never
21510 Account expires                                         : never
21511 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
21512 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
21513 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
21514 root@tjener:~#
21515 </pre></blockquote>
21516
21517 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
21518 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
21519 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
21520
21521 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
21522 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
21523
21524 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
21525 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21526
21527 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
21528 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
21529 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
21530 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
21531 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
21532 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
21533 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
21534
21535 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
21536 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
21537 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
21538 change.</p>
21539
21540       </div>
21541       <div class="tags">
21542
21543
21544         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
21545
21546
21547       </div>
21548     </div>
21549     <div class="padding"></div>
21550
21551     <div class="entry">
21552       <div class="title">
21553         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
21554       </div>
21555       <div class="date">
21556         28th April 2010
21557       </div>
21558       <div class="body">
21559         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
21560 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
21561 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
21562 and go.</p>
21563
21564 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
21565 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
21566 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
21567 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
21568
21569 <ul>
21570
21571  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
21572    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
21573    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
21574    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
21575    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
21576    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
21577    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
21578    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
21579    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
21580    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
21581    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
21582    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
21583
21584  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
21585    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
21586    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
21587    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
21588    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
21589    or the Fedora developed
21590    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
21591    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
21592
21593  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
21594    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
21595    directory, using unison.</li>
21596
21597  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
21598    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
21599    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
21600    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
21601    implemented.</li>
21602
21603  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
21604    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
21605
21606  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
21607    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
21608    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
21609
21610 </ul>
21611
21612 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
21613 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
21614 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
21615 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
21616 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
21617 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
21618 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
21619 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
21620 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
21621
21622 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21623 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21624
21625       </div>
21626       <div class="tags">
21627
21628
21629         Tags: <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>.
21630
21631
21632       </div>
21633     </div>
21634     <div class="padding"></div>
21635
21636     <div class="entry">
21637       <div class="title">
21638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
21639       </div>
21640       <div class="date">
21641         19th April 2010
21642       </div>
21643       <div class="body">
21644         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
21645 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
21646 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
21647 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
21648 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
21649 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
21650 restrictions on the web, for example from
21651 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
21652 epub-version from
21653 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
21654 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
21655 strongly recommend this book.</p>
21656
21657       </div>
21658       <div class="tags">
21659
21660
21661         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21662
21663
21664       </div>
21665     </div>
21666     <div class="padding"></div>
21667
21668     <div class="entry">
21669       <div class="title">
21670         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
21671       </div>
21672       <div class="date">
21673         14th April 2010
21674       </div>
21675       <div class="body">
21676         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
21677 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
21678 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
21679 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
21680 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
21681 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
21682 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
21683 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
21684 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
21685
21686 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
21687 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
21688 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
21689 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
21690 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
21691
21692 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
21693 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
21694
21695 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
21696 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
21697 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
21698 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
21699 to work properly.</p>
21700
21701 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
21702 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
21703 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
21704 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
21705 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
21706 time.</p>
21707
21708 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
21709 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
21710 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
21711 up in a few days.</p>
21712
21713       </div>
21714       <div class="tags">
21715
21716
21717         Tags: <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>.
21718
21719
21720       </div>
21721     </div>
21722     <div class="padding"></div>
21723
21724     <div class="entry">
21725       <div class="title">
21726         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
21727       </div>
21728       <div class="date">
21729          6th March 2010
21730       </div>
21731       <div class="body">
21732         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
21733 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
21734 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
21735 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
21736 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
21737 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
21738
21739 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
21740 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
21741 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
21742 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
21743
21744 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
21745 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
21746 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
21747 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
21748 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
21749 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
21750
21751       </div>
21752       <div class="tags">
21753
21754
21755         Tags: <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>.
21756
21757
21758       </div>
21759     </div>
21760     <div class="padding"></div>
21761
21762     <div class="entry">
21763       <div class="title">
21764         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
21765       </div>
21766       <div class="date">
21767         11th February 2010
21768       </div>
21769       <div class="body">
21770         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
21771 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
21772 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
21773 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
21774 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
21775 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
21776 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
21777
21778 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
21779
21780 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
21781 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
21782 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
21783 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
21784
21785       </div>
21786       <div class="tags">
21787
21788
21789         Tags: <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>.
21790
21791
21792       </div>
21793     </div>
21794     <div class="padding"></div>
21795
21796     <div class="entry">
21797       <div class="title">
21798         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
21799       </div>
21800       <div class="date">
21801         27th January 2010
21802       </div>
21803       <div class="body">
21804         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
21805 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
21806 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
21807 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
21808 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
21809 further.</p>
21810
21811 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
21812 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
21813 configured to be a server for the
21814 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
21815 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
21816 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
21817 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
21818 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
21819 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
21820 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
21821 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
21822 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
21823 and Nagios configuration.</p>
21824
21825 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
21826 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
21827 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
21828 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
21829
21830 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
21831 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
21832 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
21833 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
21834 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
21835 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
21836 the machine.</p>
21837
21838 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
21839 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
21840 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
21841 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
21842
21843 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
21844 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
21845 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
21846 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
21847 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
21848 everything is taken care of.</p>
21849
21850       </div>
21851       <div class="tags">
21852
21853
21854         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
21855
21856
21857       </div>
21858     </div>
21859     <div class="padding"></div>
21860
21861     <div class="entry">
21862       <div class="title">
21863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
21864       </div>
21865       <div class="date">
21866         12th August 2009
21867       </div>
21868       <div class="body">
21869         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
21870 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
21871 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
21872 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
21873
21874 <table>
21875 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21876 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21877 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
21878 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
21879 </table>
21880
21881 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
21882 got these numbers:</p>
21883
21884 <table>
21885 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21886 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
21887 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
21888 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
21889 </table>
21890
21891 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
21892
21893 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
21894 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
21895 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
21896 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
21897 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
21898
21899
21900 <table>
21901 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21902 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21903 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
21904 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
21905 </table>
21906
21907 <p>And with 'site:no':
21908
21909 <table>
21910 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21911 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
21912 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
21913 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
21914 </table>
21915
21916 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
21917 numbers.</p>
21918
21919       </div>
21920       <div class="tags">
21921
21922
21923         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21924
21925
21926       </div>
21927     </div>
21928     <div class="padding"></div>
21929
21930     <div class="entry">
21931       <div class="title">
21932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
21933       </div>
21934       <div class="date">
21935          8th August 2009
21936       </div>
21937       <div class="body">
21938         <p>According to <a
21939 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
21940 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
21941 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
21942 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
21943 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
21944 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
21945 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
21946 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
21947 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
21948 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
21949
21950 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
21951 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
21952 seminar this autumn.</p>
21953
21954       </div>
21955       <div class="tags">
21956
21957
21958         Tags: <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>.
21959
21960
21961       </div>
21962     </div>
21963     <div class="padding"></div>
21964
21965     <div class="entry">
21966       <div class="title">
21967         <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>
21968       </div>
21969       <div class="date">
21970         27th July 2009
21971       </div>
21972       <div class="body">
21973         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
21974 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
21975 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
21976 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
21977 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
21978 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
21979 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
21980
21981 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
21982 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
21983 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
21984
21985       </div>
21986       <div class="tags">
21987
21988
21989         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21990
21991
21992       </div>
21993     </div>
21994     <div class="padding"></div>
21995
21996     <div class="entry">
21997       <div class="title">
21998         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
21999       </div>
22000       <div class="date">
22001         22nd July 2009
22002       </div>
22003       <div class="body">
22004         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
22005 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
22006 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
22007 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
22008 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
22009 the package up to date.</p>
22010
22011 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
22012 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
22013 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
22014 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
22015 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
22016 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
22017 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
22018 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
22019 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
22020 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
22021 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
22022 working on the future release.</p>
22023
22024 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
22025 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
22026
22027       </div>
22028       <div class="tags">
22029
22030
22031         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22032
22033
22034       </div>
22035     </div>
22036     <div class="padding"></div>
22037
22038     <div class="entry">
22039       <div class="title">
22040         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
22041       </div>
22042       <div class="date">
22043         24th June 2009
22044       </div>
22045       <div class="body">
22046         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
22047 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
22048 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
22049 funded
22050 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
22051 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
22052 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
22053 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
22054 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
22055 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
22056
22057 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
22058 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
22059 boot:</p>
22060
22061 <ul>
22062
22063 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
22064
22065 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
22066    clock is in UTC.</li>
22067
22068 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
22069    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22070    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
22071
22072 </ul>
22073
22074 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
22075 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
22076 Villegas</a>.
22077
22078 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
22079 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
22080 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
22081 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
22082 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
22083 using this.</p>
22084
22085 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
22086 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
22087 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
22088 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
22089 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
22090 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
22091 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
22092
22093       </div>
22094       <div class="tags">
22095
22096
22097         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>.
22098
22099
22100       </div>
22101     </div>
22102     <div class="padding"></div>
22103
22104     <div class="entry">
22105       <div class="title">
22106         <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>
22107       </div>
22108       <div class="date">
22109          2nd May 2009
22110       </div>
22111       <div class="body">
22112         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
22113 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
22114 do not yet know them.</p>
22115
22116 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
22117 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
22118 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
22119 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
22120 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
22121 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
22122 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
22123 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
22124 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
22125 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
22126 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
22127
22128 <p>The second one is
22129 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
22130 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
22131 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
22132 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
22133 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
22134 and the company behind it is running
22135 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
22136 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
22137 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
22138 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
22139 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
22140 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
22141 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
22142 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
22143
22144 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
22145 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
22146 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
22147 surrounded by today.</p>
22148
22149       </div>
22150       <div class="tags">
22151
22152
22153         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>.
22154
22155
22156       </div>
22157     </div>
22158     <div class="padding"></div>
22159
22160     <div class="entry">
22161       <div class="title">
22162         <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>
22163       </div>
22164       <div class="date">
22165         28th April 2009
22166       </div>
22167       <div class="body">
22168         <p>Julien Blache
22169 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
22170 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
22171 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
22172 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
22173 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
22174 properties.</p>
22175
22176       </div>
22177       <div class="tags">
22178
22179
22180         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>.
22181
22182
22183       </div>
22184     </div>
22185     <div class="padding"></div>
22186
22187     <div class="entry">
22188       <div class="title">
22189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
22190       </div>
22191       <div class="date">
22192          5th April 2009
22193       </div>
22194       <div class="body">
22195         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
22196 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
22197 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
22198 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
22199 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
22200 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
22201 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
22202 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
22203
22204 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
22205 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
22206 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
22207   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
22208   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
22209
22210 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
22211 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
22212 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
22213 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
22214
22215 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
22216 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
22217 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
22218 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
22219
22220 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
22221 set -e
22222 URL="$1"
22223 SAVEFILE="$2"
22224 DURATION="$3"
22225 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
22226   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
22227   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
22228 pid=$!
22229 sleep $DURATION
22230 kill $pid
22231 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
22232
22233       </div>
22234       <div class="tags">
22235
22236
22237         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
22238
22239
22240       </div>
22241     </div>
22242     <div class="padding"></div>
22243
22244     <div class="entry">
22245       <div class="title">
22246         <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>
22247       </div>
22248       <div class="date">
22249         30th March 2009
22250       </div>
22251       <div class="body">
22252         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
22253 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
22254 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
22255 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
22256 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
22257 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
22258 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
22259 application.</p>
22260
22261 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
22262 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
22263 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
22264 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
22265 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
22266 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
22267 blocked from doing so.</p>
22268
22269 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
22270 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
22271 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
22272 requirements change.</p>
22273
22274 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
22275 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
22276 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
22277
22278       </div>
22279       <div class="tags">
22280
22281
22282         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>.
22283
22284
22285       </div>
22286     </div>
22287     <div class="padding"></div>
22288
22289     <div class="entry">
22290       <div class="title">
22291         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
22292       </div>
22293       <div class="date">
22294         29th March 2009
22295       </div>
22296       <div class="body">
22297         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
22298 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
22299 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
22300 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
22301 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
22302 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
22303 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
22304 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
22305 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
22306 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
22307 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
22308 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
22309 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
22310 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
22311 now. :)</p>
22312
22313       </div>
22314       <div class="tags">
22315
22316
22317         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>.
22318
22319
22320       </div>
22321     </div>
22322     <div class="padding"></div>
22323
22324     <div class="entry">
22325       <div class="title">
22326         <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>
22327       </div>
22328       <div class="date">
22329         29th March 2009
22330       </div>
22331       <div class="body">
22332         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
22333 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
22334 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
22335 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
22336 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
22337 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
22338
22339 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
22340 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
22341 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
22342 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
22343 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
22344 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
22345 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
22346 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
22347 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
22348 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
22349 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
22350 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
22351 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
22352
22353 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
22354 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
22355 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
22356 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
22357
22358 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
22359 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
22360
22361 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
22362 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
22363 new IETF work group?</p>
22364
22365       </div>
22366       <div class="tags">
22367
22368
22369         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22370
22371
22372       </div>
22373     </div>
22374     <div class="padding"></div>
22375
22376     <div class="entry">
22377       <div class="title">
22378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
22379       </div>
22380       <div class="date">
22381         28th February 2009
22382       </div>
22383       <div class="body">
22384         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
22385 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
22386 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
22387 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
22388 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
22389 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
22390 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
22391 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
22392 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
22393 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
22394 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
22395 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
22396 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
22397 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
22398 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
22399 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
22400 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
22401 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
22402 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
22403 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
22404 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
22405 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
22406 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
22407 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
22408 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
22409 machine.</p>
22410
22411 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
22412 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
22413 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
22414 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
22415 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
22416 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
22417 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
22418
22419 <pre>
22420 use LWP::Simple;
22421 use POSIX;
22422 use WWW::Mechanize;
22423 use Date::Parse;
22424 [...]
22425 sub get_support_info {
22426     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
22427     my $str;
22428
22429     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
22430         # fetch website from Dell support
22431         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
22432         my $webpage = get($url);
22433         return undef unless ($webpage);
22434
22435         my $daysleft = -1;
22436         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
22437         foreach my $line (@lines) {
22438             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
22439             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
22440             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
22441
22442             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
22443             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
22444             my $lastend = "";
22445             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
22446                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
22447
22448                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22449                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
22450                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22451                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
22452                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
22453                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
22454                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
22455             }
22456             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
22457             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
22458                 if ($lastend lt $today);
22459         }
22460     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
22461         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
22462         my $url =
22463             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
22464         $mech->get($url);
22465         my $fields = {
22466             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
22467             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
22468             'country' => 'NO',
22469             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
22470             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
22471         };
22472         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
22473                             fields      => $fields );
22474         # Next step is screen scraping
22475         my $content = $mech->content();
22476
22477         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
22478         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
22479         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
22480         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
22481
22482         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
22483
22484         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
22485             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
22486                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
22487             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
22488             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22489                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
22490             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22491                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
22492
22493             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
22494
22495             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
22496                 if ($end lt $today);
22497         }
22498     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
22499         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
22500         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
22501         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
22502             my $content =
22503                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
22504             if ($content) {
22505                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
22506                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
22507                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
22508                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
22509
22510                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
22511                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
22512
22513                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
22514
22515                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
22516                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
22517                     if ($end lt $today);
22518             }
22519         }
22520     }
22521     return $str;
22522 }
22523 </pre>
22524
22525 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
22526 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
22527 from dmidecode.</p>
22528
22529 <pre>
22530 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
22531                        "447707-B21");
22532 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
22533 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
22534                        "1234567");
22535 </pre>
22536
22537 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
22538 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
22539
22540 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
22541 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
22542 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
22543 do so.</p>
22544
22545       </div>
22546       <div class="tags">
22547
22548
22549         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22550
22551
22552       </div>
22553     </div>
22554     <div class="padding"></div>
22555
22556     <div class="entry">
22557       <div class="title">
22558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
22559       </div>
22560       <div class="date">
22561         20th February 2009
22562       </div>
22563       <div class="body">
22564         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
22565 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
22566 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
22567 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
22568 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
22569 the "missing" computer.</p>
22570
22571 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
22572 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
22573 code blocks as defined in the
22574 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
22575 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
22576 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
22577 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
22578 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
22579 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
22580 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
22581 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
22582 codes.</p>
22583
22584 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
22585 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
22586 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
22587 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
22588 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
22589 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
22590
22591 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
22592 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
22593 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
22594 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
22595 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
22596 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
22597 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
22598 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
22599 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
22600 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
22601
22602 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
22603 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
22604 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
22605
22606       </div>
22607       <div class="tags">
22608
22609
22610         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22611
22612
22613       </div>
22614     </div>
22615     <div class="padding"></div>
22616
22617     <div class="entry">
22618       <div class="title">
22619         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
22620       </div>
22621       <div class="date">
22622         17th January 2009
22623       </div>
22624       <div class="body">
22625         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
22626 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
22627 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
22628 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
22629 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
22630 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
22631 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
22632 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
22633 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
22634 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
22635 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
22636 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
22637 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
22638 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
22639
22640 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
22641 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
22642 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
22643 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
22644 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
22645 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
22646 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
22647 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
22648 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
22649 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
22650 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
22651 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
22652 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
22653 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
22654 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
22655 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
22656 playing when the download is done.</p>
22657
22658 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
22659 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
22660 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
22661 too.</p>
22662
22663 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
22664 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
22665 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
22666 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
22667
22668       </div>
22669       <div class="tags">
22670
22671
22672         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
22673
22674
22675       </div>
22676     </div>
22677     <div class="padding"></div>
22678
22679     <div class="entry">
22680       <div class="title">
22681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
22682       </div>
22683       <div class="date">
22684         28th December 2008
22685       </div>
22686       <div class="body">
22687         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
22688 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
22689 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
22690 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
22691 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
22692 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
22693 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
22694 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
22695 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
22696 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
22697 source, sink and mixer applications and
22698 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
22699 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
22700 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
22701 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
22702 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
22703 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
22704 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
22705 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
22706 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
22707
22708 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
22709 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
22710 larger stick as well.</p>
22711
22712       </div>
22713       <div class="tags">
22714
22715
22716         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
22717
22718
22719       </div>
22720     </div>
22721     <div class="padding"></div>
22722
22723     <div class="entry">
22724       <div class="title">
22725         <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>
22726       </div>
22727       <div class="date">
22728          7th December 2008
22729       </div>
22730       <div class="body">
22731         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
22732 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
22733 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
22734 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
22735 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
22736 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
22737 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
22738 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
22739
22740 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
22741 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
22742 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
22743 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
22744 of these cards.</p>
22745
22746       </div>
22747       <div class="tags">
22748
22749
22750         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>.
22751
22752
22753       </div>
22754     </div>
22755     <div class="padding"></div>
22756
22757     <div class="entry">
22758       <div class="title">
22759         <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>
22760       </div>
22761       <div class="date">
22762         25th November 2008
22763       </div>
22764       <div class="body">
22765         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
22766 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
22767 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
22768 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
22769 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
22770 notes are available on
22771 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
22772 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
22773 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
22774 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
22775 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
22776 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
22777 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
22778 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
22779 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
22780
22781 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
22782 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
22783
22784       </div>
22785       <div class="tags">
22786
22787
22788         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>.
22789
22790
22791       </div>
22792     </div>
22793     <div class="padding"></div>
22794
22795     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
22796     <div id="sidebar">
22797
22798
22799
22800 <h2>Archive</h2>
22801 <ul>
22802
22803 <li>2015
22804 <ul>
22805
22806 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
22807
22808 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
22809
22810 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
22811
22812 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
22813
22814 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
22815
22816 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
22817
22818 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (1)</a></li>
22819
22820 </ul></li>
22821
22822 <li>2014
22823 <ul>
22824
22825 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
22826
22827 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
22828
22829 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
22830
22831 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
22832
22833 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
22834
22835 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22836
22837 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
22838
22839 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
22840
22841 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
22842
22843 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
22844
22845 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22846
22847 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
22848
22849 </ul></li>
22850
22851 <li>2013
22852 <ul>
22853
22854 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
22855
22856 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
22857
22858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
22859
22860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
22861
22862 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22863
22864 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
22865
22866 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
22867
22868 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
22869
22870 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
22871
22872 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
22873
22874 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
22875
22876 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22877
22878 </ul></li>
22879
22880 <li>2012
22881 <ul>
22882
22883 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
22884
22885 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
22886
22887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
22888
22889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
22890
22891 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
22892
22893 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
22894
22895 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
22896
22897 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22898
22899 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
22900
22901 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
22902
22903 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
22904
22905 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
22906
22907 </ul></li>
22908
22909 <li>2011
22910 <ul>
22911
22912 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
22913
22914 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
22915
22916 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
22917
22918 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
22919
22920 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
22921
22922 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22923
22924 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
22925
22926 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22927
22928 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
22929
22930 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22931
22932 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22933
22934 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
22935
22936 </ul></li>
22937
22938 <li>2010
22939 <ul>
22940
22941 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
22942
22943 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
22944
22945 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
22946
22947 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
22948
22949 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22950
22951 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
22952
22953 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
22954
22955 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
22956
22957 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
22958
22959 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
22960
22961 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
22962
22963 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
22964
22965 </ul></li>
22966
22967 <li>2009
22968 <ul>
22969
22970 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
22971
22972 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
22973
22974 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
22975
22976 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
22977
22978 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22979
22980 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
22981
22982 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
22983
22984 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
22985
22986 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
22987
22988 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22989
22990 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22991
22992 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22993
22994 </ul></li>
22995
22996 <li>2008
22997 <ul>
22998
22999 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
23000
23001 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23002
23003 </ul></li>
23004
23005 </ul>
23006
23007
23008
23009 <h2>Tags</h2>
23010 <ul>
23011
23012  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
23013
23014  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
23015
23016  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
23017
23018  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
23019
23020  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
23021
23022  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
23023
23024  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
23025
23026  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
23027
23028  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (109)</a></li>
23029
23030  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
23031
23032  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
23033
23034  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
23035
23036  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (13)</a></li>
23037
23038  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
23039
23040  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (280)</a></li>
23041
23042  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
23043
23044  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
23045
23046  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (15)</a></li>
23047
23048  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
23049
23050  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
23051
23052  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (19)</a></li>
23053
23054  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
23055
23056  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
23057
23058  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
23059
23060  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
23061
23062  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
23063
23064  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
23065
23066  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
23067
23068  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
23069
23070  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (35)</a></li>
23071
23072  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (263)</a></li>
23073
23074  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (176)</a></li>
23075
23076  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (18)</a></li>
23077
23078  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
23079
23080  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (52)</a></li>
23081
23082  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (86)</a></li>
23083
23084  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
23085
23086  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
23087
23088  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
23089
23090  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
23091
23092  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
23093
23094  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
23095
23096  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
23097
23098  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
23099
23100  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
23101
23102  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
23103
23104  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
23105
23106  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (47)</a></li>
23107
23108  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
23109
23110  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
23111
23112  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (33)</a></li>
23113
23114  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
23115
23116  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
23117
23118  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
23119
23120  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (53)</a></li>
23121
23122  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
23123
23124  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (36)</a></li>
23125
23126 </ul>
23127
23128
23129     </div>
23130     <p style="text-align: right">
23131  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
23132 </p>
23133
23134   </body>
23135 </html>