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1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
3 <channel>
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged debian</title>
5 <description>Entries tagged debian</description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
7
8
9 <item>
10 <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
13 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
14 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
15 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
16 for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
17 pluggable hardware devices, which I
18 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
19 out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
20 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
21 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
22 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
23 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
24 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
25 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
26 repository in Debian. The new name? It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
27 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;
28
29 &lt;pre&gt;
30 git clone git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/isenkram.git
31 cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage
32 &lt;/pre&gt;
33
34 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
35 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
36 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
37 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
38
39 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
40 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
41 stuff, in other words. I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
42 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
43 word.&lt;/p&gt;
44 </description>
45 </item>
46
47 <item>
48 <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
49 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
50 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
51 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
52 <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
53 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
54 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;. Now my
55 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
56 it, fetch the
57 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
58 from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
59 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
60 autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;
61
62 &lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
63
64 &lt;ul&gt;
65
66 &lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
67 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
68
69 &lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
70 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
71 initially did.&lt;/li&gt;
72
73 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
74 the APT database, a database
75 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
76 via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;
77
78 &lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
79 isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
80 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
81 package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;
82
83 &lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
84 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;
85
86 &lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
87 package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;
88
89 &lt;/ul&gt;
90
91 &lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
92 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
93 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
94 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
95
96 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
97 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
98 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
99 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
100 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
101
102 &lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
103 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
104 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
105 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
106 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
107 method. I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
108 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
109 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;
110
111 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
112 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
113 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
114 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
115 hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;. If you lack debuild, install the
116 devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;
117 </description>
118 </item>
119
120 <item>
121 <title>Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</title>
122 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</link>
123 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</guid>
124 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
125 <description>&lt;p&gt;This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
126 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
127 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
128 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
129 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
130 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
131 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
132 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
133 not a durable solution.
134
135 &lt;p&gt;My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
136 got a new one more than 10 years ago. It still holds true.:)&lt;/p&gt;
137
138 &lt;ul&gt;
139
140 &lt;li&gt;Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
141 than A4).&lt;/li&gt;
142 &lt;li&gt;Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.&lt;/li&gt;
143 &lt;li&gt;Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.&lt;/li&gt;
144 &lt;li&gt;Long battery life time. Preferable a week.&lt;/li&gt;
145 &lt;li&gt;Internal WIFI network card.&lt;/li&gt;
146 &lt;li&gt;Internal Twisted Pair network card.&lt;/li&gt;
147 &lt;li&gt;Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)&lt;/li&gt;
148 &lt;li&gt;Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.&lt;/li&gt;
149 &lt;li&gt;Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12&quot; (A4 paper
150 size).&lt;/li&gt;
151 &lt;li&gt;Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
152 X.org packages.&lt;/li&gt;
153 &lt;li&gt;Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
154 the time).
155
156 &lt;/ul&gt;
157
158 &lt;p&gt;You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
159 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
160 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
161 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
162 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
163 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
164 Lenovo took over. But I&#39;ve been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
165 still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;
166
167 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
168 external keyboard? I&#39;ll have to check the
169 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linux-laptop.net/&quot;&gt;Linux Laptops site&lt;/a&gt; for
170 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
171 of the vendors listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxpreloaded.com/&quot;&gt;Linux
172 Pre-loaded site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
173 </description>
174 </item>
175
176 <item>
177 <title>How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</title>
178 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</link>
179 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</guid>
180 <pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
181 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
182 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
183 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins&quot;&gt;specifications
184 done by Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
185 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
186 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
187 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:&lt;/p&gt;
188
189 &lt;pre&gt;
190 #!/usr/bin/python
191 import sys
192 import apt
193 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
194 cache = apt.Cache()
195 cache.open(None)
196 thepkgs = []
197 for pkg in cache:
198 version = pkg.candidate
199 if version is None:
200 version = pkg.installed
201 if version is None:
202 continue
203 record = version.record
204 if not record.has_key(&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;):
205 continue
206 mime_types = record[&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;].split(&#39;,&#39;)
207 for t in mime_types:
208 t = t.rstrip().strip()
209 if t == mimetype:
210 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
211 return thepkgs
212 mimetype = &quot;audio/ogg&quot;
213 if 1 &lt; len(sys.argv):
214 mimetype = sys.argv[1]
215 print &quot;Browser plugin packages supporting %s:&quot; % mimetype
216 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
217 print &quot; %s&quot; %pkg
218 &lt;/pre&gt;
219
220 &lt;p&gt;It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:&lt;/p&gt;
221
222 &lt;pre&gt;
223 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
224 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
225 gecko-mediaplayer
226 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
227 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
228 browser-plugin-gnash
229 %
230 &lt;/pre&gt;
231
232 &lt;p&gt;In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
233 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
234 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
235 anyone working on adding it?&lt;/p&gt;
236
237 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-18 14:20&lt;/strong&gt;: The Debian BTS
238 request for icweasel support for this feature is
239 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/484010&quot;&gt;#484010&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 (and
240 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698426&quot;&gt;#698426&lt;/a&gt; from today). Lack
241 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
242 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
243 </description>
244 </item>
245
246 <item>
247 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</title>
248 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</link>
249 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</guid>
250 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
251 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal&quot;&gt;DEP-11
252 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive&lt;/a&gt;, is a
253 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
254 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
255 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
256 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
257 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
258 downloaded by the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
259
260 &lt;p&gt;To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
261 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
262 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
263 can be found on the
264 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest&quot;&gt;Skolelinux FTP
265 site&lt;/a&gt;. Using the collected information, it become possible to
266 answer the question in the title. Here are the 20 most supported MIME
267 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
268 The complete list is available from the link above.&lt;/p&gt;
269
270 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Stable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
271
272 &lt;pre&gt;
273 count MIME type
274 ----- -----------------------
275 32 text/plain
276 30 audio/mpeg
277 29 image/png
278 28 image/jpeg
279 27 application/ogg
280 26 audio/x-mp3
281 25 image/tiff
282 25 image/gif
283 22 image/bmp
284 22 audio/x-wav
285 20 audio/x-flac
286 19 audio/x-mpegurl
287 18 video/x-ms-asf
288 18 audio/x-musepack
289 18 audio/x-mpeg
290 18 application/x-ogg
291 17 video/mpeg
292 17 audio/x-scpls
293 17 audio/ogg
294 16 video/x-ms-wmv
295 &lt;/pre&gt;
296
297 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Testing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
298
299 &lt;pre&gt;
300 count MIME type
301 ----- -----------------------
302 33 text/plain
303 32 image/png
304 32 image/jpeg
305 29 audio/mpeg
306 27 image/gif
307 26 image/tiff
308 26 application/ogg
309 25 audio/x-mp3
310 22 image/bmp
311 21 audio/x-wav
312 19 audio/x-mpegurl
313 19 audio/x-mpeg
314 18 video/mpeg
315 18 audio/x-scpls
316 18 audio/x-flac
317 18 application/x-ogg
318 17 video/x-ms-asf
319 17 text/html
320 17 audio/x-musepack
321 16 image/x-xbitmap
322 &lt;/pre&gt;
323
324 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
325
326 &lt;pre&gt;
327 count MIME type
328 ----- -----------------------
329 31 text/plain
330 31 image/png
331 31 image/jpeg
332 29 audio/mpeg
333 28 application/ogg
334 27 image/gif
335 26 image/tiff
336 26 audio/x-mp3
337 23 audio/x-wav
338 22 image/bmp
339 21 audio/x-flac
340 20 audio/x-mpegurl
341 19 audio/x-mpeg
342 18 video/x-ms-asf
343 18 video/mpeg
344 18 audio/x-scpls
345 18 application/x-ogg
346 17 audio/x-musepack
347 16 video/x-ms-wmv
348 16 video/x-msvideo
349 &lt;/pre&gt;
350
351 &lt;p&gt;I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
352 information mentioned in DEP-11. I have not yet had time to look at
353 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
354 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
355
356 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-16 13:35&lt;/strong&gt;: Updated numbers after
357 discovering a typo in my script.&lt;/p&gt;
358 </description>
359 </item>
360
361 <item>
362 <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
363 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
364 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
365 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
366 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
367 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
368 values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
369 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
370 dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
371 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
372 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
373 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
374 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
375 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
376
377 &lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
378 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
379 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
380 modalias.&lt;/p&gt;
381
382 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
383 Package: package-name
384 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
385 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
386
387 &lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
388 for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;
389
390 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
391 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;
392
393 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
394 Package: cheese
395 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
396 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
397
398 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
399 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;
400
401 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
402 Package: pcmciautils
403 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
404 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
405
406 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
407 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;
408
409 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
410 Package: colorhug-client
411 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
412 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
413
414 &lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
415 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
416 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
417
418 &lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
419 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
420 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
421 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
422 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I&#39;ve
423 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
424 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
425 Raring.&lt;/p&gt;
426
427 &lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
428 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
429 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
430 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
431 try the
432 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
433 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
434 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
435 repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;
436
437 &lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
438 install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;
439
440 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
441 % ./hw-support-lookup
442 &lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
443 &lt;br&gt;%
444 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
445
446 &lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
447 propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;
448
449 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
450 % ./hw-support-lookup
451 &lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
452 &lt;br&gt;%
453 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
454
455 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
456 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
457 database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;
458
459 &lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
460 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
461 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
462 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
463 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
464 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
465 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
466 see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;
467
468 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
469 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
470 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
471 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
472 </description>
473 </item>
474
475 <item>
476 <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
477 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
478 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
479 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
480 <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
481 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
482 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
483 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
484 in
485 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
486 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:
487
488 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
489
490 &lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
491 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
492 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
493 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
494 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
495 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.
496
497 &lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
498 this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
499
500 &lt;pre&gt;
501 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
502 &lt;/pre&gt;
503
504 &lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
505 using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;
506
507 &lt;pre&gt;
508 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
509 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
510 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
511 %
512 &lt;/pre&gt;
513
514 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
515
516 &lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
517 Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;
518
519 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
520 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
521 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
522
523 &lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;
524
525 &lt;pre&gt;
526 v 00008086 (vendor)
527 d 00002770 (device)
528 sv 00001028 (subvendor)
529 sd 000001AD (subdevice)
530 bc 06 (bus class)
531 sc 00 (bus subclass)
532 i 00 (interface)
533 &lt;/pre&gt;
534
535 &lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
536 -n&#39; as 8086:2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
537 0600. The 0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
538 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;
539
540 &lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
541 means.&lt;/p&gt;
542
543 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
544
545 &lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
546 USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
547
548 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
549 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
550 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
551
552 &lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;
553
554 &lt;pre&gt;
555 v 1D6B (device vendor)
556 p 0001 (device product)
557 d 0206 (bcddevice)
558 dc 09 (device class)
559 dsc 00 (device subclass)
560 dp 00 (device protocol)
561 ic 09 (interface class)
562 isc 00 (interface subclass)
563 ip 00 (interface protocol)
564 &lt;/pre&gt;
565
566 &lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
567 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
568 these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;
569
570 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
571 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
572 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
573 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
574 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
575 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
576
577 &lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
578 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
579 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;
580
581 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
582
583 &lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
584 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;
585
586 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
587 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
588 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
589
590 &lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;
591
592 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
593
594 &lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
595 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
596 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;
597
598 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
599 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
600 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
601
602 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
603
604 &lt;pre&gt;
605 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
606 bvr 1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
607 bd 06/15/2005 (BIOS date)
608 svn IBM (system vendor)
609 pn 2371H4G (product name)
610 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
611 rvn IBM (board vendor)
612 rn 2371H4G (board name)
613 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
614 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
615 ct 10 (chassis type)
616 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
617 &lt;/pre&gt;
618
619 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
620 found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;
621
622 &lt;pre&gt;
623 3 Desktop
624 4 Low Profile Desktop
625 5 Pizza Box
626 6 Mini Tower
627 7 Tower
628 8 Portable
629 9 Laptop
630 10 Notebook
631 11 Hand Held
632 12 Docking Station
633 13 All In One
634 14 Sub Notebook
635 15 Space-saving
636 16 Lunch Box
637 17 Main Server Chassis
638 18 Expansion Chassis
639 19 Sub Chassis
640 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
641 21 Peripheral Chassis
642 22 RAID Chassis
643 23 Rack Mount Chassis
644 24 Sealed-case PC
645 25 Multi-system
646 26 CompactPCI
647 27 AdvancedTCA
648 28 Blade
649 29 Blade Enclosing
650 &lt;/pre&gt;
651
652 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
653 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
654 claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;
655
656 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
657
658 &lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
659 test machine:&lt;/p&gt;
660
661 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
662 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
663 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
664
665 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
666
667 &lt;pre&gt;
668 ty 01 (type)
669 pr 00 (prototype)
670 id 00 (id)
671 ex 00 (extra)
672 &lt;/pre&gt;
673
674 &lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
675 the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;
676
677 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
678
679 &lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
680 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
681 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
682 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
683 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
684 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
685 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;
686
687 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
688
689 &lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
690 one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
691
692 &lt;pre&gt;
693 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
694 echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
695 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/ /&#39; ; \
696 done
697 &lt;/pre&gt;
698
699 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
700 list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;
701
702 &lt;pre&gt;
703 acpi:ACPI0003:
704 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
705 acpi:device:
706 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
707 acpi:IBM0068:
708 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
709 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
710 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
711 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
712 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
713 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
714 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
715 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
716 [...]
717 &lt;/pre&gt;
718
719 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
720 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
721 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
722 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
723
724 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
725 &quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
726 in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
727 </description>
728 </item>
729
730 <item>
731 <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
732 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
733 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
734 <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
735 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
736 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
737 Launcher and updated the Debian package
738 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
739 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
740 also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
741 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
742 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
743 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
744 contribute. &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
745 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
746 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
747 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
748 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
749 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
750 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
751 view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
752 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
753 </description>
754 </item>
755
756 <item>
757 <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
758 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
759 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
760 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
761 <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
762 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
763 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
764 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
765 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
766 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
767 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
768 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
769 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
770 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
771 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;
772
773 &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
774 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
775 the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;. The idea is fairly
776 simple:
777
778 &lt;ul&gt;
779
780 &lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
781 starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
782
783 &lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
784 hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;
785
786 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
787 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
788 packages.&lt;/li&gt;
789
790 &lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
791 package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;
792
793 &lt;/ul&gt;
794
795 &lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
796 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
797 discover database to find packages and
798 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
799 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
800
801 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
802 draft package is now checked into
803 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
804 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;. In the process, I updated the
805 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
806 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
807 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
808 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
809 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
810 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
811 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
812 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
813 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
814 because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;
815
816 &lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
817 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
818 inserted):&lt;/p&gt;
819
820 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
821
822 &lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
823 install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
824 program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;
825
826 &lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
827 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
828 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
829 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
830 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
831 reportbug if it isn&#39;t. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
832 such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
833
834 &lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
835 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
836 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
837 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
838 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
839 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
840 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
841 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
842 not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;
843
844 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
845 please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
846 </description>
847 </item>
848
849 <item>
850 <title>New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</title>
851 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</link>
852 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</guid>
853 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
854 <description>&lt;p&gt;During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
855 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;LEGO Mindstorm
856 NXT&lt;/a&gt;. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
857 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
858 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
859 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
860 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; (server
861 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
862 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
863 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
864
865 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-03: A
866 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;project page&lt;/a&gt;
867 including links to Lego related packages is now available.&lt;/p&gt;
868 </description>
869 </item>
870
871 <item>
872 <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
873 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
874 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
875 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
876 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
877 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;
878
879 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
880 decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
881 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
882 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
883 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
884 The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
885 package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
886 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
887 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
888 name.&lt;/p&gt;
889
890 &lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
891 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
892 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;
893
894 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
895 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
896 cd bitcoin
897 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
898 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
899 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
900
901 &lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
902 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
903 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
904 client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
905 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
906 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
907 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
908 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
909 not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;
910
911 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
912 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
913 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
914 </description>
915 </item>
916
917 <item>
918 <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
919 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
920 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
921 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
922 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
923 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
924 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
925 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
926 state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
927 Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
928 is now maintained by a
929 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
930 people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
931 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
932 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
933 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
934 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
935 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
936 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
937 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
938 Corallo in a
939 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
940 Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
941 Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
942
943 &lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
944 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
945 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
946 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
947 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
948 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
949 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
950 patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
951 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
952 new version to unstable.
953
954 &lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
955 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
956 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
957 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
958 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
959 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
960 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
961 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
962 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
963 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
964 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
965 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
966 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
967 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
968 have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;
969
970 &lt;p&gt;My
971 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
972 with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
973 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
974 years ago, as can be
975 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
976 on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;. Thank you everyone for your
977 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
978 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
979 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
980 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
981 the same address as last time,
982 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
983 </description>
984 </item>
985
986 <item>
987 <title>Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</title>
988 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
989 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
990 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
991 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I
992 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html&quot;&gt;mentioned
993 this summer&lt;/a&gt;, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
994 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
995 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook&quot;&gt;Gitorious
996 repository for the project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
997
998 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
999 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
1000 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
1001 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.&lt;/p&gt;
1002
1003 &lt;p&gt;Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
1004 PostScript formats at
1005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s Computer
1006 Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1007 </description>
1008 </item>
1009
1010 <item>
1011 <title>Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</title>
1012 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</link>
1013 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</guid>
1014 <pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1015 <description>&lt;p&gt;I dag fyller
1016 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813&quot;&gt;Debian-prosjektet 19
1017 år&lt;/a&gt;. Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
1018 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!&lt;/p&gt;
1019 </description>
1020 </item>
1021
1022 <item>
1023 <title>Song book for Computer Scientists</title>
1024 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
1025 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
1026 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1027 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1028 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uit.no/&quot;&gt;University of Tromsø&lt;/a&gt;, I started
1029 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
1030 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1031 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1032 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
1033 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1034 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1035 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
1036 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
1037 missing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;
1038
1039 &lt;p&gt;I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1040 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1041 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1042 Especially now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://debconf12.debconf.org/&quot;&gt;Debconf
1043 12&lt;/a&gt; is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
1044 out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s
1045 Computer Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.
1046 </description>
1047 </item>
1048
1049 <item>
1050 <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
1051 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
1052 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
1053 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1054 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
1055 around 1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
1056 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
1057 up to date. If the firmware isn&#39;t the latest and greatest, the
1058 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
1059 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
1060 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
1061 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
1062 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
1063 the tools to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
1064
1065 &lt;p&gt;To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
1066 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
1067 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
1068 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.&lt;/P&gt;
1069
1070 &lt;p&gt;On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
1071 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&quot;&gt;an XML file&lt;/a&gt;
1072 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
1073 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
1074 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
1075 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
1076 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
1077 be activated on the first reboot.&lt;/p&gt;
1078
1079 &lt;p&gt;This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
1080 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
1081 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.&lt;/p&gt;
1082
1083 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1084 #!/usr/bin/perl
1085 use strict;
1086 use warnings;
1087 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
1088 BEGIN {
1089 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
1090 my %rhelmodules = (
1091 &#39;XML::Simple&#39; =&gt; &#39;perl-XML-Simple&#39;,
1092 );
1093 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
1094 eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
1095 if ($@) {
1096 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
1097 system(&quot;yum install -y $pkg&quot;);
1098 eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
1099 }
1100 }
1101 }
1102 my $errorsto = &#39;pere@hungry.com&#39;;
1103
1104 upgrade_dell();
1105
1106 exit 0;
1107
1108 sub run_firmware_script {
1109 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
1110 unless ($script) {
1111 print STDERR &quot;fail: missing script name\n&quot;;
1112 exit 1
1113 }
1114 print STDERR &quot;Running $script\n\n&quot;;
1115
1116 if (0 == system(&quot;sh $script $opts&quot;)) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
1117 print STDERR &quot;success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n&quot;;
1118 } else {
1119 print STDERR &quot;fail: firmware script returned error\n&quot;;
1120 }
1121 }
1122
1123 sub run_firmware_scripts {
1124 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
1125 # Run firmware packages
1126 for my $dir (@dirs) {
1127 print STDERR &quot;info: Running scripts in $dir\n&quot;;
1128 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die &quot;Unable to open directory $dir: $!&quot;;
1129 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
1130 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
1131 run_firmware_script($opts, &quot;$dir/$s&quot;);
1132 }
1133 closedir $dh;
1134 }
1135 }
1136
1137 sub download {
1138 my $url = shift;
1139 print STDERR &quot;info: Downloading $url\n&quot;;
1140 system(&quot;wget --quiet \&quot;$url\&quot;&quot;);
1141 }
1142
1143 sub upgrade_dell {
1144 my @dirs;
1145 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1146 chomp $product;
1147
1148 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
1149
1150 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
1151 system(&#39;yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail&#39;);
1152
1153 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
1154 CLEANUP =&gt; 1
1155 );
1156 chdir($tmpdir);
1157 fetch_dell_fw(&#39;catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
1158 system(&#39;gunzip Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
1159 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list(&#39;Catalog.xml&#39;);
1160 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
1161 my $fwopts = &quot;-q&quot;;
1162 if (@paths) {
1163 for my $url (@paths) {
1164 fetch_dell_fw($url);
1165 }
1166 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
1167 } else {
1168 print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
1169 print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
1170 }
1171 chdir(&#39;/&#39;);
1172 } else {
1173 print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
1174 print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
1175 }
1176 }
1177
1178 sub fetch_dell_fw {
1179 my $path = shift;
1180 my $url = &quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path&quot;;
1181 download($url);
1182 }
1183
1184 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
1185 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
1186 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
1187 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
1188 my $filename = shift;
1189
1190 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1191 chomp $product;
1192 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
1193
1194 print STDERR &quot;Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n&quot;;
1195
1196 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
1197 my @paths;
1198 for my $bundle (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareBundle}}) {
1199 my $brand = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
1200 my $model = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Model}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
1201 my $oscode;
1202 if (&quot;ARRAY&quot; eq ref $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}) {
1203 $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}[0]-&gt;{osCode};
1204 } else {
1205 $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}-&gt;{osCode};
1206 }
1207 if ($mybrand eq $brand &amp;&amp; $mymodel eq $model &amp;&amp; &quot;LIN&quot; eq $oscode)
1208 {
1209 @paths = map { $_-&gt;{path} } @{$bundle-&gt;{Contents}-&gt;{Package}};
1210 }
1211 }
1212 for my $component (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareComponent}}) {
1213 my $componenttype = $component-&gt;{ComponentType}-&gt;{value};
1214
1215 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
1216 next if &#39;APAC&#39; eq $componenttype;
1217
1218 my $cpath = $component-&gt;{path};
1219 for my $path (@paths) {
1220 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
1221 push(@paths, $cpath);
1222 }
1223 }
1224 }
1225 return @paths;
1226 }
1227 &lt;/pre&gt;
1228
1229 &lt;p&gt;The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
1230 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
1231 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
1232 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
1233 outdated.&lt;/p&gt;
1234 </description>
1235 </item>
1236
1237 <item>
1238 <title>How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</title>
1239 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</link>
1240 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</guid>
1241 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Aug 2011 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
1242 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wouter Verhelst have some
1243 &lt;a href=&quot;http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot&quot;&gt;interesting
1244 comments and opinions&lt;/a&gt; on my blog post on
1245 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html&quot;&gt;the
1246 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian&lt;/a&gt; and my blog post about
1247 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html&quot;&gt;the
1248 default KDE desktop in Debian&lt;/a&gt;. I only have time to address one
1249 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
1250 misunderstanding he bring forward:&lt;/p&gt;
1251
1252 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1253 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
1254 single-user system (by adding &#39;single&#39; to the kernel command line;
1255 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
1256 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1257
1258 &lt;p&gt;This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
1259 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same. I am not surprised he
1260 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
1261 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
1262 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn&#39;t the same as single user
1263 mode. I&#39;ll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
1264 hard to explain.&lt;/p&gt;
1265
1266 &lt;p&gt;Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
1267 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. This means the only thing that is
1268 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
1269 state &quot;between&quot; the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
1270 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
1271 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
1272 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
1273 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
1274 runs &quot;init -t1 S&quot; to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
1275 1. It is confusing that the &#39;S&#39; (single user) init mode is not the
1276 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
1277 mode).&lt;/p&gt;
1278
1279 &lt;p&gt;This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
1280 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
1281 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. When booting into
1282 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc
1283 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. A problem show up when
1284 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
1285 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
1286 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
1287 after visiting single user mode.&lt;/p&gt;
1288
1289 &lt;p&gt;A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
1290 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
1291 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
1292 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
1293 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
1294 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
1295 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to get a
1296 functioning single user mode during boot.&lt;/p&gt;
1297
1298 &lt;p&gt;I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
1299 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
1300 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;
1301 </description>
1302 </item>
1303
1304 <item>
1305 <title>What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</title>
1306 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</link>
1307 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</guid>
1308 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
1309 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
1310 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
1311 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
1312 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
1313 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
1314 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
1315 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
1316 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
1317 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
1318 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
1319 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
1320 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
1321 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.&lt;/p&gt;
1322
1323 &lt;p&gt;So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
1324 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
1325 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
1326 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
1327 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
1328 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
1329 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
1330 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
1331 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.&lt;/p&gt;
1332
1333 &lt;p&gt;Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
1334 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
1335 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
1336 is presented.&lt;/p&gt;
1337
1338 &lt;p&gt;As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
1339 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
1340 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
1341 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
1342 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
1343 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
1344 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
1345 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
1346 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
1347 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
1348 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
1349 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
1350 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
1351 find time to push this forward.&lt;/p&gt;
1352 </description>
1353 </item>
1354
1355 <item>
1356 <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
1357 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
1358 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
1359 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1360 <description>&lt;p&gt;While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
1361 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
1362 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
1363 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
1364 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
1365
1366 &lt;p&gt;I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
1367 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
1368 do this in Debian we would have a source.&lt;/p&gt;
1369
1370 &lt;ol&gt;
1371
1372 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.&lt;/strong&gt; When there
1373 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
1374 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
1375 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
1376 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
1377 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
1378 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
1379 Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
1380
1381 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
1382 plugins.&lt;/strong&gt; When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
1383 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
1384 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
1385 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
1386 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
1387 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
1388 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
1389 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
1390 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
1391 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
1392 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
1393 not the browser for any missing features.&lt;/li&gt;
1394
1395 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
1396 handlers.&lt;/strong&gt; When the media players encounter a format or codec
1397 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
1398 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
1399 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
1400 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
1401 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
1402 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
1403 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
1404 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.&lt;/li&gt;
1405
1406 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better browser handling of some MIME types.&lt;/strong&gt; When
1407 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
1408 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
1409 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
1410 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
1411 latter behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;
1412
1413 &lt;/ol&gt;
1414
1415 &lt;p&gt;There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
1416 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
1417 it do not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
1418
1419 &lt;p&gt;I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
1420 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
1421 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;
1422 </description>
1423 </item>
1424
1425 <item>
1426 <title>Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</title>
1427 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
1428 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
1429 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
1430 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/A&gt;
1431 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
1432 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
1433 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
1434 security support for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;
1435
1436 &lt;p&gt;The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
1437 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
1438 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
1439 their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; clone
1440 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
1441 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn&#39;t very long, and I hope the perl group
1442 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
1443 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
1444 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
1445 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
1446 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
1447 easier in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
1448
1449 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
1450 installed on my server was a simple call to &#39;cpan2deb Module::Name&#39;
1451 and &#39;dpkg -i&#39; to install the resulting package. But this leave me
1452 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
1453 do not have time for.&lt;/p&gt;
1454 </description>
1455 </item>
1456
1457 <item>
1458 <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
1459 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
1460 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
1461 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1462 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
1463 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
1464 update in English.&lt;/p&gt;
1465
1466 &lt;p&gt;The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
1467 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
1468 of the British service
1469 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; up and running,
1470 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
1471 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
1472 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
1473 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt; on what to develop,
1474 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
1475 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
1476 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
1477 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
1478 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is using
1479 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; as the map
1480 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
1481 support for this had to be added/fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
1482
1483 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
1484 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
1485 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
1486 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
1487 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
1488 public infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
1489
1490 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
1491 such service?&lt;/p&gt;
1492 </description>
1493 </item>
1494
1495 <item>
1496 <title>Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</title>
1497 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</link>
1498 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</guid>
1499 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
1500 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
1501 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
1502 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
1503 available on the Internet, and check our locally
1504 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
1505 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
1506 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
1507 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
1508 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
1509 out which security holes were present in our free software
1510 collection.&lt;/p&gt;
1511
1512 &lt;p&gt;After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
1513 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
1514 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
1515 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
1516 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
1517 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
1518 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
1519 solution. Enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html&quot;&gt;Common
1520 Platform Enumeration&lt;/a&gt; dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
1521 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
1522 mapped to CVEs in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National
1523 Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, allowing me to look up know security
1524 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
1525 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
1526 This is fairly trivial (I google for &#39;cve cpe $package&#39; and check the
1527 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).&lt;/p&gt;
1528
1529 &lt;p&gt;To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
1530 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
1531 check out, one could look up
1532 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3&quot;&gt;cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
1533 in NVD&lt;/a&gt; and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
1534 The most recent one is
1535 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001&quot;&gt;CVE-2010-0001&lt;/a&gt;,
1536 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
1537 list of affected versions is provided.&lt;/p&gt;
1538
1539 &lt;p&gt;The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
1540 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I&#39;ve written a
1541 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
1542 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
1543 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
1544 security issues out.&lt;/p&gt;
1545
1546 &lt;p&gt;Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
1547 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
1548 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
1549 RHEL is providing
1550 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt&quot;&gt;a
1551 map from CVE to CPE&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that they are using the CPE
1552 information. I&#39;m not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;
1553
1554 &lt;p&gt;To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
1555 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
1556 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
1557 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
1558 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
1559 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
1560 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
1561 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
1562 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
1563 established soon.&lt;/p&gt;
1564
1565 &lt;p&gt;An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
1566 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
1567 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
1568 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
1569 for their packages.&lt;/p&gt;
1570 </description>
1571 </item>
1572
1573 <item>
1574 <title>Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</title>
1575 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</link>
1576 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</guid>
1577 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1578 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the
1579 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
1580 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
1581 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
1582 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
1583 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
1584 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
1585 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
1586 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
1587 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3&gt;&amp;1&lt;/tt&gt;. The relevant output on
1588 one of my machines like this:&lt;/p&gt;
1589
1590 &lt;pre&gt;
1591 loaded modules:
1592 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
1593 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
1594 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
1595 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
1596 10de:03ec pata_amd
1597 10de:03f6 sata_nv
1598 1022:1103 k8temp
1599 109e:036e bttv
1600 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
1601 11ab:4364 sky2
1602 &lt;/pre&gt;
1603
1604 &lt;p&gt;The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
1605 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:&lt;/p&gt;
1606
1607 &lt;pre&gt;
1608 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
1609 echo loaded pci modules:
1610 (
1611 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
1612 for address in * ; do
1613 if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
1614 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1615 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
1616 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
1617 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $3}&#39;`
1618 echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
1619 fi
1620 fi
1621 done
1622 )
1623 echo
1624 fi
1625 &lt;/pre&gt;
1626
1627 &lt;p&gt;Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
1628 mappings:&lt;/p&gt;
1629
1630 &lt;pre&gt;
1631 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
1632 echo loaded usb modules:
1633 (
1634 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
1635 for address in * ; do
1636 if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
1637 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1638 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
1639 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
1640 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $6}&#39;)
1641 if [ &quot;$id&quot; ] ; then
1642 echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
1643 fi
1644 fi
1645 fi
1646 done
1647 )
1648 echo
1649 fi
1650 &lt;/pre&gt;
1651
1652 &lt;p&gt;This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
1653 well.&lt;/p&gt;
1654 </description>
1655 </item>
1656
1657 <item>
1658 <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
1659 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
1660 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
1661 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
1662 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent at work here at the &lt;a
1663 href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; testing if the new
1664 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
1665 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
1666 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
1667 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
1668 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
1669 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
1670 university.&lt;/p&gt;
1671
1672 &lt;p&gt;My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
1673 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
1674 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
1675 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
1676 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
1677 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
1678 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
1679 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.&lt;/p&gt;
1680
1681 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
1682 I perform on a new model.&lt;/p&gt;
1683
1684 &lt;ul&gt;
1685
1686 &lt;li&gt;Is PXE installation working? I&#39;m testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
1687 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
1688 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.&lt;/li&gt;
1689
1690 &lt;li&gt;Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
1691 installation, X.org is working.&lt;/li&gt;
1692
1693 &lt;li&gt;Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
1694 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
1695 reported by the program.&lt;/li&gt;
1696
1697 &lt;li&gt;Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
1698 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
1699 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
1700 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
1701 normally test this by playing
1702 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ &quot;&gt;a HTML5
1703 video&lt;/a&gt; in Firefox/Iceweasel.&lt;/li&gt;
1704
1705 &lt;li&gt;Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
1706 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
1707
1708 &lt;li&gt;Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
1709 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
1710
1711 &lt;li&gt;Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
1712 picture from the v4l device show up.&lt;/li&gt;
1713
1714 &lt;li&gt;Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
1715 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
1716 few.&lt;/li&gt;
1717
1718 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
1719 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
1720 notice this.&lt;/li&gt;
1721
1722 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I&#39;m testing if the
1723 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
1724 resume.&lt;/li&gt;
1725
1726 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
1727 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
1728 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
1729 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
1730 not.&lt;/li&gt;
1731
1732 &lt;li&gt;Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
1733 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
1734 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
1735 existence.&lt;/li&gt;
1736
1737 &lt;/ul&gt;
1738
1739 &lt;p&gt;By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
1740 for the HP machines I am testing. I&#39;m not done yet, so I will report
1741 the test results later. For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
1742 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
1743 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p. As you
1744 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
1745 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
1746 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.&lt;/p&gt;
1747 </description>
1748 </item>
1749
1750 <item>
1751 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
1752 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
1753 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
1754 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
1755 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
1756 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
1757 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
1758 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
1759
1760 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
1761 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
1762 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
1763 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
1764 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
1765 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
1766 all transactions. There I can see that my address
1767 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
1768 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
1769 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
1770 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
1771 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
1772 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
1773 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
1774 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
1775 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
1776 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I&#39;m told
1777 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
1778 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
1779 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
1780
1781 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
1782 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
1783 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
1784 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
1785 If the Skolelinux foundation
1786 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
1787 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
1788 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
1789 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
1790 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
1791 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
1792 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
1793 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
1794
1795 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
1796 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
1797 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
1798 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
1799 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
1800 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
1801 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
1802 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
1803 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
1804 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
1805 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I&#39;m sure they
1806 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
1807 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
1808 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
1809 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
1810
1811 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
1812 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
1813 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
1814 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
1815 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
1816 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
1817 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
1818 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
1819 BitCoins. Check out
1820 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
1821 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
1822 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
1823 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
1824 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
1825
1826 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
1827 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
1828 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
1829 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
1830 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
1831 </description>
1832 </item>
1833
1834 <item>
1835 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
1836 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
1837 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
1838 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1839 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
1840 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
1841 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
1842 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
1843 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
1844 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
1845 A blog post from
1846 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
1847 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
1848 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
1849 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;. I got
1850 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
1851 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
1852 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
1853
1854 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
1855 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
1856 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
1857 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
1858 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
1859 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
1860 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
1861 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
1862 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
1863 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
1864
1865 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
1866 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
1867 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
1868 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
1869 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
1870 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
1871 you can even get
1872 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
1873 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
1874 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
1875 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
1876
1877 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
1878 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
1879 donations to the address
1880 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
1881 </description>
1882 </item>
1883
1884 <item>
1885 <title>Why isn&#39;t Debian Edu using VLC?</title>
1886 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</link>
1887 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</guid>
1888 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
1889 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
1890 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
1891 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
1892 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
1893 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
1894 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
1895 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
1896 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.&lt;p&gt;
1897
1898 &lt;p&gt;But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
1899 mplayer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
1900 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
1901 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
1902 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
1903 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
1904 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;last
1905 tested the browser plugins&lt;/a&gt; available in Debian, the VLC plugin
1906 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
1907 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
1908 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.&lt;/P&gt;
1909
1910 &lt;p&gt;While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
1911 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
1912 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
1913 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
1914 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
1915 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
1916 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
1917 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
1918 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
1919 what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;
1920 </description>
1921 </item>
1922
1923 <item>
1924 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</title>
1925 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</link>
1926 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</guid>
1927 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
1928 <description>&lt;p&gt;Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
1929 upgrade testing of the
1930 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
1931 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt; to do &lt;tt&gt;apt-get autoremove&lt;/tt&gt; when using apt-get.
1932 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
1933 can now present the updated result from today:&lt;/p&gt;
1934
1935 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
1936
1937 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
1938
1939 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
1940 apache2.2-bin
1941 aptdaemon
1942 baobab
1943 binfmt-support
1944 browser-plugin-gnash
1945 cheese-common
1946 cli-common
1947 cups-pk-helper
1948 dmz-cursor-theme
1949 empathy
1950 empathy-common
1951 freedesktop-sound-theme
1952 freeglut3
1953 gconf-defaults-service
1954 gdm-themes
1955 gedit-plugins
1956 geoclue
1957 geoclue-hostip
1958 geoclue-localnet
1959 geoclue-manual
1960 geoclue-yahoo
1961 gnash
1962 gnash-common
1963 gnome
1964 gnome-backgrounds
1965 gnome-cards-data
1966 gnome-codec-install
1967 gnome-core
1968 gnome-desktop-environment
1969 gnome-disk-utility
1970 gnome-screenshot
1971 gnome-search-tool
1972 gnome-session-canberra
1973 gnome-system-log
1974 gnome-themes-extras
1975 gnome-themes-more
1976 gnome-user-share
1977 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
1978 gstreamer0.10-tools
1979 gtk2-engines
1980 gtk2-engines-pixbuf
1981 gtk2-engines-smooth
1982 hamster-applet
1983 libapache2-mod-dnssd
1984 libapr1
1985 libaprutil1
1986 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
1987 libaprutil1-ldap
1988 libart2.0-cil
1989 libboost-date-time1.42.0
1990 libboost-python1.42.0
1991 libboost-thread1.42.0
1992 libchamplain-0.4-0
1993 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
1994 libcheese-gtk18
1995 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
1996 libcryptui0
1997 libdiscid0
1998 libelf1
1999 libepc-1.0-2
2000 libepc-common
2001 libepc-ui-1.0-2
2002 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2003 libfreerdp0
2004 libgconf2.0-cil
2005 libgdata-common
2006 libgdata7
2007 libgdu-gtk0
2008 libgee2
2009 libgeoclue0
2010 libgexiv2-0
2011 libgif4
2012 libglade2.0-cil
2013 libglib2.0-cil
2014 libgmime2.4-cil
2015 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2016 libgnome2.24-cil
2017 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
2018 libgpod-common
2019 libgpod4
2020 libgtk2.0-cil
2021 libgtkglext1
2022 libgtksourceview2.0-common
2023 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2024 libmono-addins0.2-cil
2025 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
2026 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2027 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
2028 libmono-posix2.0-cil
2029 libmono-security2.0-cil
2030 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2031 libmono-system2.0-cil
2032 libmtp8
2033 libmusicbrainz3-6
2034 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
2035 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
2036 libopal3.6.8
2037 libpolkit-gtk-1-0
2038 libpt2.6.7
2039 libpython2.6
2040 librpm1
2041 librpmio1
2042 libsdl1.2debian
2043 libsrtp0
2044 libssh-4
2045 libtelepathy-farsight0
2046 libtelepathy-glib0
2047 libtidy-0.99-0
2048 media-player-info
2049 mesa-utils
2050 mono-2.0-gac
2051 mono-gac
2052 mono-runtime
2053 nautilus-sendto
2054 nautilus-sendto-empathy
2055 p7zip-full
2056 pkg-config
2057 python-aptdaemon
2058 python-aptdaemon-gtk
2059 python-axiom
2060 python-beautifulsoup
2061 python-bugbuddy
2062 python-clientform
2063 python-coherence
2064 python-configobj
2065 python-crypto
2066 python-cupshelpers
2067 python-elementtree
2068 python-epsilon
2069 python-evolution
2070 python-feedparser
2071 python-gdata
2072 python-gdbm
2073 python-gst0.10
2074 python-gtkglext1
2075 python-gtksourceview2
2076 python-httplib2
2077 python-louie
2078 python-mako
2079 python-markupsafe
2080 python-mechanize
2081 python-nevow
2082 python-notify
2083 python-opengl
2084 python-openssl
2085 python-pam
2086 python-pkg-resources
2087 python-pyasn1
2088 python-pysqlite2
2089 python-rdflib
2090 python-serial
2091 python-tagpy
2092 python-twisted-bin
2093 python-twisted-conch
2094 python-twisted-core
2095 python-twisted-web
2096 python-utidylib
2097 python-webkit
2098 python-xdg
2099 python-zope.interface
2100 remmina
2101 remmina-plugin-data
2102 remmina-plugin-rdp
2103 remmina-plugin-vnc
2104 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2105 rhythmbox-plugins
2106 rpm-common
2107 rpm2cpio
2108 seahorse-plugins
2109 shotwell
2110 software-center
2111 system-config-printer-udev
2112 telepathy-gabble
2113 telepathy-mission-control-5
2114 telepathy-salut
2115 tomboy
2116 totem
2117 totem-coherence
2118 totem-mozilla
2119 totem-plugins
2120 transmission-common
2121 xdg-user-dirs
2122 xdg-user-dirs-gtk
2123 xserver-xephyr
2124 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2125
2126 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
2127
2128 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2129 cheese
2130 ekiga
2131 eog
2132 epiphany-extensions
2133 evolution-exchange
2134 fast-user-switch-applet
2135 file-roller
2136 gcalctool
2137 gconf-editor
2138 gdm
2139 gedit
2140 gedit-common
2141 gnome-games
2142 gnome-games-data
2143 gnome-nettool
2144 gnome-system-tools
2145 gnome-themes
2146 gnuchess
2147 gucharmap
2148 guile-1.8-libs
2149 libavahi-ui0
2150 libdmx1
2151 libgalago3
2152 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2153 libgtksourceview2.0-0
2154 liblircclient0
2155 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
2156 libspeexdsp1
2157 libsvga1
2158 rhythmbox
2159 seahorse
2160 sound-juicer
2161 system-config-printer
2162 totem-common
2163 transmission-gtk
2164 vinagre
2165 vino
2166 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2167
2168 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
2169
2170 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2171 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2172 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2173
2174 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
2175
2176 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2177 [nothing]
2178 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2179
2180 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
2181
2182 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
2183
2184 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2185 ksmserver
2186 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2187
2188 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
2189
2190 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2191 kwin
2192 network-manager-kde
2193 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2194
2195 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
2196
2197 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2198 arts
2199 dolphin
2200 freespacenotifier
2201 google-gadgets-gst
2202 google-gadgets-xul
2203 kappfinder
2204 kcalc
2205 kcharselect
2206 kde-core
2207 kde-plasma-desktop
2208 kde-standard
2209 kde-window-manager
2210 kdeartwork
2211 kdeartwork-emoticons
2212 kdeartwork-style
2213 kdeartwork-theme-icon
2214 kdebase
2215 kdebase-apps
2216 kdebase-workspace
2217 kdebase-workspace-bin
2218 kdebase-workspace-data
2219 kdeeject
2220 kdelibs
2221 kdeplasma-addons
2222 kdeutils
2223 kdewallpapers
2224 kdf
2225 kfloppy
2226 kgpg
2227 khelpcenter4
2228 kinfocenter
2229 konq-plugins-l10n
2230 konqueror-nsplugins
2231 kscreensaver
2232 kscreensaver-xsavers
2233 ktimer
2234 kwrite
2235 libgle3
2236 libkde4-ruby1.8
2237 libkonq5
2238 libkonq5-templates
2239 libnetpbm10
2240 libplasma-ruby
2241 libplasma-ruby1.8
2242 libqt4-ruby1.8
2243 marble-data
2244 marble-plugins
2245 netpbm
2246 nuvola-icon-theme
2247 plasma-dataengines-workspace
2248 plasma-desktop
2249 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
2250 plasma-runners-addons
2251 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
2252 plasma-scriptengine-python
2253 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
2254 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
2255 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
2256 plasma-scriptengines
2257 plasma-wallpapers-addons
2258 plasma-widget-folderview
2259 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2260 ruby
2261 sweeper
2262 update-notifier-kde
2263 xscreensaver-data-extra
2264 xscreensaver-gl
2265 xscreensaver-gl-extra
2266 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2267 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2268
2269 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
2270
2271 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2272 ark
2273 google-gadgets-common
2274 google-gadgets-qt
2275 htdig
2276 kate
2277 kdebase-bin
2278 kdebase-data
2279 kdepasswd
2280 kfind
2281 klipper
2282 konq-plugins
2283 konqueror
2284 ksysguard
2285 ksysguardd
2286 libarchive1
2287 libcln6
2288 libeet1
2289 libeina-svn-06
2290 libggadget-1.0-0b
2291 libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
2292 libgps19
2293 libkdecorations4
2294 libkephal4
2295 libkonq4
2296 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
2297 libkscreensaver5
2298 libksgrd4
2299 libksignalplotter4
2300 libkunitconversion4
2301 libkwineffects1a
2302 libmarblewidget4
2303 libntrack-qt4-1
2304 libntrack0
2305 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
2306 libplasmaclock4a
2307 libplasmagenericshell4
2308 libprocesscore4a
2309 libprocessui4a
2310 libqalculate5
2311 libqedje0a
2312 libqtruby4shared2
2313 libqzion0a
2314 libruby1.8
2315 libscim8c2a
2316 libsmokekdecore4-3
2317 libsmokekdeui4-3
2318 libsmokekfile3
2319 libsmokekhtml3
2320 libsmokekio3
2321 libsmokeknewstuff2-3
2322 libsmokeknewstuff3-3
2323 libsmokekparts3
2324 libsmokektexteditor3
2325 libsmokekutils3
2326 libsmokenepomuk3
2327 libsmokephonon3
2328 libsmokeplasma3
2329 libsmokeqtcore4-3
2330 libsmokeqtdbus4-3
2331 libsmokeqtgui4-3
2332 libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
2333 libsmokeqtopengl4-3
2334 libsmokeqtscript4-3
2335 libsmokeqtsql4-3
2336 libsmokeqtsvg4-3
2337 libsmokeqttest4-3
2338 libsmokeqtuitools4-3
2339 libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
2340 libsmokeqtxml4-3
2341 libsmokesolid3
2342 libsmokesoprano3
2343 libtaskmanager4a
2344 libtidy-0.99-0
2345 libweather-ion4a
2346 libxklavier16
2347 libxxf86misc1
2348 okteta
2349 oxygencursors
2350 plasma-dataengines-addons
2351 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
2352 plasma-widget-lancelot
2353 plasma-widgets-addons
2354 plasma-widgets-workspace
2355 polkit-kde-1
2356 ruby1.8
2357 systemsettings
2358 update-notifier-common
2359 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2360
2361 &lt;p&gt;Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
2362 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
2363 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
2364 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
2365 </description>
2366 </item>
2367
2368 <item>
2369 <title>Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</title>
2370 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</link>
2371 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</guid>
2372 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
2373 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the computers in use by the
2374 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux project&lt;/a&gt;
2375 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
2376 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
2377 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine. This was a
2378 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
2379 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
2380 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
2381 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.&lt;/p&gt;
2382
2383 &lt;p&gt;I found
2384 &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM&quot;&gt;a
2385 nice recipe&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
2386 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
2387 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
2388 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
2389 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.&lt;/p&gt;
2390
2391 &lt;pre&gt;
2392 #!/bin/sh
2393
2394 # Based on
2395 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
2396
2397 set -e
2398 set -x
2399
2400 if [ -z &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
2401 echo &quot;Usage: $0 &amp;lt;hostname&amp;gt;&quot;
2402 exit 1
2403 else
2404 host=&quot;$1&quot;
2405 fi
2406
2407 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
2408 echo &quot;error: unable to find LVM volume for $host&quot;
2409 exit 1
2410 fi
2411
2412 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
2413 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
2414 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
2415 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
2416
2417 img=$host.img
2418 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
2419 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
2420
2421 parted $img mklabel msdos
2422 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
2423 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
2424 parted $img set 1 boot on
2425
2426 modprobe dm-mod
2427 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
2428 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
2429
2430 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
2431 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
2432 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
2433
2434 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
2435 losetup -d /dev/loop0
2436 &lt;/pre&gt;
2437
2438 &lt;p&gt;The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
2439 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;
2440
2441 &lt;p&gt;After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
2442 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
2443 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
2444 seem to work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
2445 </description>
2446 </item>
2447
2448 <item>
2449 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</title>
2450 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</link>
2451 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</guid>
2452 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
2453 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m still running upgrade testing of the
2454 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
2455 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt;, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
2456 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.&lt;/p&gt;
2457
2458 &lt;p&gt;I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
2459 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
2460 can see if anything should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;
2461
2462 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
2463
2464 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
2465
2466 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2467 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
2468 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
2469 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
2470 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
2471 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
2472 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
2473 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
2474 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
2475 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
2476 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
2477 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2478 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2479 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
2480 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
2481 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
2482 libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
2483 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2484 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
2485 libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2486 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
2487 libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
2488 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2489 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
2490 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
2491 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
2492 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2493 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2494 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
2495 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2496 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
2497 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
2498 libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2499 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
2500 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
2501 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
2502 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
2503 mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
2504 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
2505 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
2506 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
2507 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
2508 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
2509 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
2510 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
2511 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
2512 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
2513 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
2514 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
2515 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
2516 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
2517 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
2518 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
2519 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2520 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
2521 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
2522 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
2523 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
2524 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
2525 zip
2526 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2527
2528 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
2529
2530 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2531 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
2532 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
2533 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
2534 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
2535 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
2536 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
2537 guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
2538 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
2539 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
2540 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
2541 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
2542 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2543 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2544 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2545 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2546 libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
2547 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2548 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
2549 libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
2550 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
2551 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
2552 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
2553 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
2554 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
2555 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
2556 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
2557 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
2558 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
2559 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
2560 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2561
2562 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
2563
2564 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2565 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2566 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2567
2568 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
2569
2570 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2571 [nothing]
2572 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2573
2574 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
2575
2576 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
2577
2578 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2579 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
2580 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
2581 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
2582 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
2583 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
2584 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
2585 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
2586 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
2587 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
2588 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
2589 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
2590 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
2591 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
2592 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
2593 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
2594 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
2595 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
2596 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
2597 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
2598 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
2599 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
2600 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
2601 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
2602 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
2603 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
2604 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
2605 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
2606 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
2607 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
2608 ttf-sazanami-gothic
2609 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2610
2611 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
2612
2613 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2614 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
2615 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
2616 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
2617 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
2618 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
2619 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
2620 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
2621 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
2622 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
2623 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
2624 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
2625 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
2626 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
2627 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
2628 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
2629 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
2630 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
2631 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
2632 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
2633 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
2634 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2635 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
2636 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
2637 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
2638 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
2639 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
2640 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
2641 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
2642 libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
2643 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
2644 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
2645 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
2646 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
2647 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2648
2649 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
2650
2651 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2652 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
2653 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
2654 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
2655 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
2656 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2657 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
2658 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2659 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2660
2661 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
2662
2663 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2664 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
2665 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2666 </description>
2667 </item>
2668
2669 <item>
2670 <title>Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</title>
2671 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</link>
2672 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</guid>
2673 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
2674 <description>&lt;p&gt;Answering
2675 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html&quot;&gt;the
2676 call from the Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; for
2677 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnashdev.org:8010&quot;&gt;buildbot&lt;/a&gt; slaves to test the
2678 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
2679 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
2680 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
2681 releases out more often.&lt;/p&gt;
2682
2683 &lt;p&gt;As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
2684 I have considered setting up a &lt;a
2685 href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/&quot;&gt;Debian/kfreebsd&lt;/a&gt;
2686 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
2687 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
2688 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
2689 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
2690 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
2691 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
2692 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
2693 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
2694 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
2695 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
2696 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
2697 </description>
2698 </item>
2699
2700 <item>
2701 <title>Debian in 3D</title>
2702 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</link>
2703 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</guid>
2704 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
2705 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2706
2707 &lt;p&gt;3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
2708 3D linked in from
2709 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/&quot;&gt;the
2710 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2711 </description>
2712 </item>
2713
2714 <item>
2715 <title>Software updates 2010-10-24</title>
2716 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</link>
2717 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</guid>
2718 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
2719 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some updates.&lt;/p&gt;
2720
2721 &lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;gnash pledge&lt;/a&gt; to
2722 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of 10
2723 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
2724 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
2725 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
2726 :)&lt;/p&gt;
2727
2728 &lt;p&gt;On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
2729 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
2730 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
2731 It is called
2732 &lt;a href=&quot;http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html&quot;&gt;kcov&lt;/a&gt;,
2733 and can be used using &lt;tt&gt;kcov &amp;lt;directory&amp;gt; &amp;lt;binary&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.
2734 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
2735 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
2736 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
2737 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.&lt;/p&gt;
2738
2739 &lt;p&gt;Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for &lt;a
2740 href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html&quot;&gt;a
2741 new alpha release of Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;, and just published the second
2742 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
2743 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
2744 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
2745 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
2746 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
2747 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
2748 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.&lt;/p&gt;
2749 </description>
2750 </item>
2751
2752 <item>
2753 <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
2754 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
2755 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
2756 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
2757 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote&quot;&gt;Debian
2758 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the adobe-flashplugin package the
2759 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
2760 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
2761 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
2762 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
2763 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
2764
2765 &lt;p&gt;In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
2766&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&amp;do=view&amp;target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
2767 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
2768 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;»), one of the most important problems
2769 schools experienced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
2770 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
2771 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
2772 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
2773 good reason to stay with Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
2774
2775 &lt;p&gt;I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
2776 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
2777 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
2778 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
2779 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
2780 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
2781 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
2782 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
2783 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
2784 pages they want to visit.&lt;/p&gt;
2785
2786 &lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
2787 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
2788 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
2789 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
2790 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
2791 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
2792 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
2793 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
2794 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
2795 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
2796 accept the new package into Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
2797 </description>
2798 </item>
2799
2800 <item>
2801 <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
2802 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
2803 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
2804 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2805 <description>&lt;p&gt;I discovered this while doing
2806 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;automated
2807 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;. A few packages
2808 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
2809 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
2810 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
2811
2812 &lt;p&gt;An example is from todays
2813 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt&quot;&gt;upgrade
2814 of KDE using aptitude&lt;/a&gt;. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
2815 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
2816 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
2817 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
2818 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
2819 because its dependencies are unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;
2820
2821 &lt;p&gt;In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:&lt;/p&gt;
2822
2823 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2824 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
2825 perl-modules depends on perl (&gt;= 5.10.1-1); however:
2826 Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
2827 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
2828 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
2829 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2830
2831 &lt;p&gt;The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
2832 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/527917&quot;&gt;reported as a bug&lt;/a&gt;, and will
2833 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
2834 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
2835 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
2836 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
2837 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
2838 of dependency loops.&lt;/p&gt;
2839
2840 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to
2841 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html&quot;&gt;the
2842 tireless effort by Bill Allombert&lt;/a&gt;, the number of circular
2843 dependencies
2844 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html&quot;&gt;left in Debian
2845 is dropping&lt;/a&gt;, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2846
2847 &lt;p&gt;Todays testing also exposed a bug in
2848 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590605&quot;&gt;update-notifier&lt;/a&gt; and
2849 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590604&quot;&gt;different behaviour&lt;/a&gt; between
2850 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
2851 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
2852 it.&lt;/p&gt;
2853 </description>
2854 </item>
2855
2856 <item>
2857 <title>What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</title>
2858 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</link>
2859 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</guid>
2860 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2861 <description>&lt;p&gt;This is a
2862 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;followup&lt;/a&gt;
2863 on my
2864 &lt;a href=&quot;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&quot;&gt;previous
2865 work&lt;/a&gt; on
2866 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html&quot;&gt;merging
2867 all&lt;/a&gt; the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
2868
2869 &lt;p&gt;As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
2870 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
2871 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
2872 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
2873
2874 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
2875 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
2876 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
2877
2878 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;powerdns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2879
2880 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend&quot;&gt;Clues
2881 on how to&lt;/a&gt; set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
2882 the web.
2883
2884 &lt;p&gt;PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
2885 One &quot;strict&quot; mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
2886 using the same LDAP objects, and a &quot;tree&quot; mode where the forward and
2887 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
2888 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
2889 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.&lt;/p&gt;
2890
2891 &lt;p&gt;In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
2892 base, and uses a &quot;base&quot; scoped search for the DNS name by adding
2893 &quot;dc=tjener,dc=intern,&quot; to the base with a filter for
2894 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; for the forward entry and
2895 &quot;dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,&quot; with a filter for
2896 &quot;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&quot; for the reverse entry. For
2897 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
2898 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
2899 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
2900 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
2901 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
2902 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
2903 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
2904 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
2905 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
2906 ldapsearch commands could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2907
2908 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2909 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2910 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2911 -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2912 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2913 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2914 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2915 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2916
2917 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2918 -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2919 -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&#39;
2920 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
2921 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
2922 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
2923 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2924
2925 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
2926 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
2927 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
2928 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2929 also exist.&lt;/p&gt;
2930
2931 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2932 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2933 objectclass: top
2934 objectclass: dnsdomain
2935 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2936 dc: tjener
2937 arecord: 10.0.2.2
2938 associateddomain: tjener.intern
2939
2940 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2941 objectclass: top
2942 objectclass: dnsdomain2
2943 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2944 dc: 2
2945 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
2946 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
2947 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2948
2949 &lt;p&gt;In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
2950 forward DNS entries, it is doing a &quot;subtree&quot; scoped search with the
2951 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
2952 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; and requests the attributes dnsttl,
2953 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
2954 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
2955 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
2956 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is &quot;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&quot;
2957 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
2958 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
2959 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
2960 instead.&lt;/p&gt;
2961
2962 &lt;p&gt;The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
2963 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2964
2965 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2966 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2967 &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2968 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2969 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2970 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2971 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2972
2973 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2974 &#39;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&#39; associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
2975 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2976
2977 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
2978 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
2979 reverse lookups.&lt;/p&gt;
2980
2981 &lt;p&gt;A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
2982 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
2983 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
2984 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
2985
2986 &lt;p&gt;The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
2987 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
2988 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.&lt;/p&gt;
2989
2990 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
2991 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
2992 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
2993 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
2994 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.&lt;/p&gt;
2995
2996 &lt;p&gt;There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
2997 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
2998 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
2999 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
3000 (zonename and relativedomainname).&lt;/p&gt;
3001
3002 &lt;p&gt;My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
3003 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
3004 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
3005 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
3006 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
3007 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):&lt;/p&gt;
3008
3009 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3010 objectclass ( some-oid NAME &#39;dnsDomainAux&#39;
3011 SUP top
3012 AUXILIARY
3013 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
3014 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
3015 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
3016 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
3017 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
3018 ))
3019 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3020
3021 &lt;p&gt;This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
3022 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
3023 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I&#39;ve sent an email to the PowerDNS
3024 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
3025 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
3026 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.&lt;/p&gt;
3027
3028 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISC dhcp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3029
3030 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
3031 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
3032 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
3033 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
3034 what is needed without having to read the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
3035
3036 &lt;p&gt;In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
3037 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
3038 stored. These are the relevant entries from
3039 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:&lt;/p&gt;
3040
3041 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3042 ldap-base-dn &quot;dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot;;
3043 ldap-dhcp-server-cn &quot;dhcp&quot;;
3044 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3045
3046 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
3047 configuration it need. The cn &quot;dhcp&quot; is located using the given LDAP
3048 base and the filter &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))&quot;. The
3049 search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
3050
3051 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3052 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3053 cn: dhcp
3054 objectClass: top
3055 objectClass: dhcpServer
3056 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3057 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3058
3059 &lt;p&gt;The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
3060 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
3061 is located using a base scope search with base &quot;cn=DHCP
3062 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; and filter
3063 &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))&quot;.
3064 The search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
3065
3066 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3067 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3068 cn: DHCP Config
3069 objectClass: top
3070 objectClass: dhcpService
3071 objectClass: dhcpOptions
3072 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3073 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
3074 dhcpStatements: authoritative
3075 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
3076 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
3077 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
3078 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3079
3080 &lt;p&gt;Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
3081 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
3082 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
3083 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
3084 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
3085 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
3086 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
3087 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
3088 related computer objects.&lt;/p&gt;
3089
3090 &lt;p&gt;When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
3091 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
3092 scoped search with &quot;cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; as
3093 the base and &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
3094 00:00:00:00:00:00))&quot; as the filter. This is what a host object look
3095 like:&lt;/p&gt;
3096
3097 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3098 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3099 cn: hostname
3100 objectClass: top
3101 objectClass: dhcpHost
3102 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3103 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
3104 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3105
3106 &lt;p&gt;There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
3107 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
3108 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
3109 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
3110 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
3111 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
3112 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
3113 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
3114 structural object class.
3115
3116 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3117
3118 &lt;p&gt;The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
3119 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its &quot;tree&quot; mode is rigid when it
3120 come to the the LDAP structure, the &quot;strict&quot; mode is very flexible,
3121 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
3122 in the configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
3123
3124 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
3125 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
3126 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
3127 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
3128 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
3129 structure.&lt;/p&gt;
3130
3131 &lt;p&gt;Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
3132 this might work for Debian Edu:&lt;/p&gt;
3133
3134 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3135 ou=services
3136 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
3137 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
3138 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3139 cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3140 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3141 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3142 cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3143 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3144 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
3145 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
3146 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3147
3148 &lt;P&gt;This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
3149 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
3150 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
3151 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.&lt;/p&gt;
3152
3153 &lt;p&gt;The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
3154 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
3155
3156 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3157 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3158 dc: hostname
3159 objectClass: top
3160 objectClass: dhcpHost
3161 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3162 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
3163 associateddomain: hostname.intern
3164 arecord: 10.11.12.13
3165 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3166 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
3167 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3168
3169 &lt;/p&gt;One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
3170 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
3171 auxiliary object class.&lt;/p&gt;
3172 </description>
3173 </item>
3174
3175 <item>
3176 <title>Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</title>
3177 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</link>
3178 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</guid>
3179 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
3180 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
3181 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
3182 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
3183 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
3184 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
3185
3186 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
3187 information finally found a solution that seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
3188
3189 &lt;p&gt;The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
3190 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
3191 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
3192 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
3193 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
3194 to a slave DNS server.&lt;/p&gt;
3195
3196 &lt;p&gt;If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
3197 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
3198 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
3199 I&#39;ve written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
3200 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
3201 seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
3202
3203 &lt;p&gt;With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
3204 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
3205 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
3206 this:&lt;/p&gt;
3207
3208 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3209 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3210 cn: hostname
3211 objectClass: dhcphost
3212 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3213 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
3214 associateddomain: hostname.intern
3215 arecord: 10.11.12.13
3216 dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3217 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
3218 ldapconfigsound: Y
3219 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3220
3221 &lt;p&gt;The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
3222 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
3223 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
3224 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
3225
3226 &lt;p&gt;I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
3227 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
3228 outside the &quot;DHCP Config&quot; subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
3229 that. If I can&#39;t figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
3230 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
3231 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
3232 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
3233 might be a good place to put it.&lt;/p&gt;
3234
3235 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3236 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
3237 </description>
3238 </item>
3239
3240 <item>
3241 <title>Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</title>
3242 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</link>
3243 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</guid>
3244 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3245 <description>&lt;p&gt;Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
3246 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
3247 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
3248 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.&lt;/p&gt;
3249
3250 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
3251 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
3252 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
3253 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
3254 LTSP clients.&lt;/p&gt;
3255
3256 &lt;p&gt;The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
3257 in a &quot;computer&quot; LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
3258 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.&lt;/p&gt;
3259
3260 &lt;p&gt;This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
3261 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
3262 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?&lt;/p&gt;
3263
3264 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3265 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
3266 #
3267 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
3268 #
3269 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
3270 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
3271 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
3272 #
3273 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
3274 # existence of attribute names.
3275 #
3276 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
3277 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
3278 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
3279 #
3280 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
3281 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
3282 #
3283 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME &#39;ltspClientAux&#39;
3284 # SUP top
3285 # AUXILIARY
3286 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
3287
3288 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
3289 if [ &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; ] ; then
3290 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
3291 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk &#39;{print $5}&#39;|sort -u) ; do
3292 filter=&quot;(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))&quot;
3293 ldapsearch -h &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; -b &quot;$LDAPBASE&quot; -v -x &quot;$filter&quot; | \
3294 grep &#39;^ltspConfig&#39; | while read attr value ; do
3295 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
3296 attr=$(echo $attr | sed &#39;s/^ltspConfig//i&#39; | tr a-z A-Z)
3297 # bass value on to clients
3298 eval &quot;$attr=$value; export $attr&quot;
3299 done
3300 done
3301 fi
3302 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3303
3304 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
3305 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
3306 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
3307 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
3308 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3309
3310 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3311 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
3312
3313 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
3314 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
3315 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html&quot;&gt;PC
3316 Xperience, Inc., 2000&lt;/a&gt;. I found its
3317 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/&quot;&gt;files&lt;/a&gt; on a
3318 personal home page over at redhat.com.&lt;/p&gt;
3319 </description>
3320 </item>
3321
3322 <item>
3323 <title>jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
3324 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
3325 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
3326 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
3327 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since
3328 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html&quot;&gt;my
3329 last post&lt;/a&gt; about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
3330 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
3331 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jxplorer.org/&quot;&gt;jXplorer&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of
3332 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
3333 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
3334 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
3335 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
3336 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html&quot;&gt;available in
3337 Debian&lt;/a&gt; testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
3338 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
3339 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
3340 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
3341 </description>
3342 </item>
3343
3344 <item>
3345 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</title>
3346 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</link>
3347 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</guid>
3348 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
3349 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a short update on my &lt;a
3350 href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;my
3351 Debian Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrade testing&lt;/a&gt;. Here is a summary of the
3352 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I&#39;m
3353 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
3354 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
3355 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; and
3356 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585716&quot;&gt;#585716&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
3357
3358 &lt;p&gt;At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
3359 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
3360 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
3361 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
3362 publish the difference.&lt;/p&gt;
3363
3364 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
3365
3366 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3367 at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3368 libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
3369 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
3370 libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
3371 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
3372 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
3373 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
3374 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
3375 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3376
3377 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
3378
3379 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3380 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
3381 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
3382 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
3383 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
3384 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
3385 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
3386 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
3387 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
3388 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3389 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
3390 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
3391 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
3392 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
3393 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
3394 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
3395 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
3396 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
3397 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
3398 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
3399 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
3400 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3401
3402 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
3403
3404 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3405 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
3406 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
3407 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3408 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3409 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
3410 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
3411 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
3412 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3413 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3414 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3415 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3416 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
3417 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
3418 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
3419 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
3420 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
3421 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
3422 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
3423 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
3424 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
3425 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
3426 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3427
3428 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
3429
3430 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3431 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
3432 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
3433 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
3434 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3435
3436 &lt;p&gt;I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
3437 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120&quot;&gt;changed
3438 in git&lt;/a&gt; today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
3439 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
3440 the difference somewhat.
3441 </description>
3442 </item>
3443
3444 <item>
3445 <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
3446 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
3447 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
3448 <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3449 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
3450 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
3451 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
3452 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
3453 &lt;a href=&quot;http://luma.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;LUMA&lt;/a&gt;, which has proved to
3454 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
3455 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
3456 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
3457 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
3458 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3459
3460 &lt;p&gt;I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
3461 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
3462 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
3463 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
3464 released.&lt;/p&gt;
3465
3466 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
3467 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
3468 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
3469 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/&quot;&gt;ldapvi&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;
3470
3471 &lt;p&gt;If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
3472 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
3473
3474 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
3475 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html&quot;&gt;gq&lt;/a&gt; package as a
3476 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
3477 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
3478 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
3479 </description>
3480 </item>
3481
3482 <item>
3483 <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
3484 <link>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</link>
3485 <guid isPermaLink="true">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</guid>
3486 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
3487 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back, I
3488 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;complained
3489 about the fact&lt;/a&gt; that it is not possible with the provided schemas
3490 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
3491 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.&lt;/p&gt;
3492
3493 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
3494 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
3495 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
3496 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
3497
3498 &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
3499 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
3500 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
3501 Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
3502
3503 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
3504 the
3505 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00&quot;&gt;DHCP
3506 schema&lt;/a&gt; to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
3507 available today from IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
3508
3509 &lt;pre&gt;
3510 --- dhcp.schema (revision 65192)
3511 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
3512 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
3513 objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
3514 NAME &#39;dhcpHost&#39;
3515 DESC &#39;This represents information about a particular client&#39;
3516 - SUP top
3517 + SUP top AUXILIARY
3518 MUST cn
3519 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
3520 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT (&#39;dhcpService&#39; &#39;dhcpSubnet&#39; &#39;dhcpGroup&#39;) )
3521 &lt;/pre&gt;
3522
3523 &lt;p&gt;I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
3524 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
3525 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.&lt;/p&gt;
3526
3527 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3528 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
3529 </description>
3530 </item>
3531
3532 <item>
3533 <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
3534 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
3535 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
3536 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
3537 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
3538 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
3539 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
3540 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
3541 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
3542 this:
3543
3544 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3545 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3546 tasksel --new-install
3547 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3548
3549 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
3550 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
3551 any output what so ever.
3552
3553 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
3554 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
3555 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
3556 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
3557 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
3558 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
3559 code like this:
3560
3561 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3562 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3563 cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
3564 $cmd
3565 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3566
3567 &lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
3568 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
3569 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
3570 ~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
3571 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
3572 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
3573 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
3574
3575 &lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
3576 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
3577 like this.&lt;/p&gt;
3578 </description>
3579 </item>
3580
3581 <item>
3582 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
3583 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
3584 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
3585 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
3586 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
3587 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
3588 of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
3589 finally made the upgrade logs available from
3590 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
3591 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
3592 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
3593 I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;
3594
3595 &lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
3596 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
3597 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
3598 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
3599 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
3600 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
3601 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
3602 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;
3603
3604 &lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
3605 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
3606 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
3607 too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;
3608
3609 &lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
3610 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
3611 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
3612 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
3613 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
3614 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
3615 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
3616 continue.&lt;/p&gt;
3617
3618 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
3619 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
3620 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
3621 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
3622 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
3623 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
3624 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
3625 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3626 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3627 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
3628 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
3629 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
3630 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
3631 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3632 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3633 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3634 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3635 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3636 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
3637 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
3638 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
3639 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
3640 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
3641 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
3642 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
3643 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
3644 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
3645 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
3646 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
3647 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;
3648
3649 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;
3650
3651 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
3652 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
3653 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
3654 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
3655 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
3656 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
3657 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
3658 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
3659 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
3660 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
3661 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3662 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
3663 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
3664 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
3665 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
3666 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
3667 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
3668 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
3669 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
3670 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
3671 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
3672 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
3673 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
3674 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
3675 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
3676 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
3677 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
3678 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
3679 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
3680 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3681 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
3682 zip&lt;/p&gt;
3683
3684 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;
3685
3686 &lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
3687 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
3688 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
3689 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
3690 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
3691 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
3692 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3693 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3694 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
3695 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
3696 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
3697 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
3698 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3699 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3700 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3701 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3702 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3703 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
3704 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
3705 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
3706 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
3707 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
3708 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
3709 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
3710 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
3711 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
3712 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
3713 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
3714
3715 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
3716 &lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
3717 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
3718 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
3719 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
3720 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
3721 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
3722 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
3723 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
3724 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
3725 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
3726 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
3727 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
3728 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
3729 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
3730 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
3731 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
3732 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
3733 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
3734 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
3735 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
3736 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
3737 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
3738 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
3739 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3740 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3741 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
3742 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
3743 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
3744 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
3745 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
3746 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
3747 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
3748 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
3749 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
3750 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3751 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
3752 xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
3753
3754 </description>
3755 </item>
3756
3757 <item>
3758 <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
3759 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
3760 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
3761 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3762 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
3763 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
3764 have been discovered and reported in the process
3765 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
3766 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
3767 enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
3768 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
3769 am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;
3770
3771 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
3772 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
3773 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
3774 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
3775 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
3776 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;
3777
3778 &lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
3779 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
3780 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
3781 is created. The bug report
3782 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
3783 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
3784 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
3785 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
3786 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
3787 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
3788 issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
3789 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
3790 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
3791 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
3792 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
3793 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
3794 Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
3795
3796 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
3797 script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
3798 trick:&lt;/p&gt;
3799
3800 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3801 #!/bin/sh
3802 set -ex
3803
3804 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
3805 desktop=$1
3806 else
3807 desktop=gnome
3808 fi
3809
3810 from=lenny
3811 to=squeeze
3812
3813 exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
3814 unset LANG
3815 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
3816 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
3817 fuser -mv .
3818 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
3819 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
3820 cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
3821 #!/bin/sh
3822 exit 101
3823 EOF
3824 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
3825 exit_cleanup() {
3826 umount $tmpdir/proc
3827 }
3828 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
3829 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
3830 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
3831
3832 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
3833
3834 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
3835 # to return the correct answers.
3836 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
3837 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
3838
3839 # Include the desktop and laptop task
3840 for test in desktop laptop ; do
3841 echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
3842 #!/bin/sh
3843 exit 2
3844 EOF
3845 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
3846 done
3847
3848 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3849 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
3850 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
3851 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
3852
3853 echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
3854 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
3855 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
3856 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
3857 fuser -mv
3858 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3859
3860 &lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
3861 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
3862 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
3863 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
3864 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
3865 kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;
3866
3867 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
3868 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
3869 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
3870 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
3871 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
3872 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
3873 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;
3874
3875 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
3876 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
3877 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
3878 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
3879 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
3880 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
3881 </description>
3882 </item>
3883
3884 <item>
3885 <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
3886 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
3887 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
3888 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
3889 <description>&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
3890 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
3891 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
3892 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
3893 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
3894 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
3895 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;
3896
3897 &lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
3898 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
3899 COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;
3900
3901 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3902 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
3903 previous=N
3904 PREVLEVEL=
3905 RUNLEVEL=
3906 runlevel=S
3907 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
3908 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
3909 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
3910 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3911
3912 &lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
3913 script.&lt;/p&gt;
3914
3915 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3916 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
3917 previous=N
3918 PREVLEVEL=N
3919 RUNLEVEL=S
3920 runlevel=S
3921 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3922
3923 &lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
3924 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
3925 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;
3926
3927 &lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
3928 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
3929 choice.&lt;/p&gt;
3930 </description>
3931 </item>
3932
3933 <item>
3934 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
3935 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
3936 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
3937 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
3938 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
3939 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
3940 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
3941 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
3942 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
3943 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
3944 </description>
3945 </item>
3946
3947 <item>
3948 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
3949 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
3950 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
3951 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
3952 <description>&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
3953 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
3954 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
3955 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
3956 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
3957
3958 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3959 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
3960 vendor count
3961 Dell Computer Corporation 1
3962 PowerEdge 1750 1
3963 IBM 1
3964 eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]- 1
3965 Intel 2
3966 [no-dmi-info] 3
3967 maintainer:~#
3968 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3969
3970 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
3971 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
3972 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
3973 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
3974 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
3975
3976 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
3977 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
3978 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
3979 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
3980 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
3981 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
3982 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
3983 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
3984 </description>
3985 </item>
3986
3987 <item>
3988 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
3989 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
3990 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
3991 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
3992 <description>&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
3993 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
3994 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
3995 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
3996 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
3997
3998 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
3999 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
4000 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
4001 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
4002 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
4003 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
4004
4005 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
4006 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
4007 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
4008 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
4009 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
4010 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
4011 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
4012 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
4013
4014 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
4015 </description>
4016 </item>
4017
4018 <item>
4019 <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
4020 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
4021 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
4022 <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
4023 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
4024 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
4025 issues are known and should be solved:
4026
4027 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
4028
4029 &lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
4030 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
4031 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
4032 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
4033 seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
4034
4035 &lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
4036 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
4037 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
4038 maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
4039
4040 &lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
4041 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
4042 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
4043 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
4044 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
4045 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
4046 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
4047 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;
4048
4049 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4050
4051 &lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
4052 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
4053 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
4054 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;
4055
4056 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4057 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4058 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
4059 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4060
4061 &lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
4062 </description>
4063 </item>
4064
4065 <item>
4066 <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
4067 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
4068 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
4069 <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4070 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
4071 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
4072 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
4073 definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;
4074
4075 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
4076 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
4077 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
4078 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
4079 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
4080 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
4081 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
4082 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
4083 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
4084 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
4085 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
4086 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
4087 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
4088 going to work.&lt;/p&gt;
4089
4090 &lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
4091 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
4092 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
4093 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
4094 &quot;external&quot; media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
4095 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
4096 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
4097 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
4098 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
4099 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
4100 Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
4101
4102 &lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
4103 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
4104 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
4105 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
4106 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
4107 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;
4108
4109 &lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
4110 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
4111 </description>
4112 </item>
4113
4114 <item>
4115 <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
4116 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
4117 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
4118 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
4119 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
4120 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
4121 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
4122 expected, if I am to believe the
4123 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
4124 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
4125 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
4126 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
4127 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
4128 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
4129 version.&lt;/p&gt;
4130
4131 More information about
4132 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
4133 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki. It is
4134 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
4135 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
4136
4137 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4138 CONCURRENCY=none
4139 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4140
4141 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4142 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4143 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
4144 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4145 </description>
4146 </item>
4147
4148 <item>
4149 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
4150 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
4151 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
4152 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
4153 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
4154 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
4155 system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
4156 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
4157 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
4158 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
4159 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
4160 to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
4161
4162 &lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
4163 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
4164 this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;
4165
4166 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4167 perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
4168 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4169
4170 &lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
4171 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;
4172
4173 &lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
4174 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
4175 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
4176 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
4177 written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
4178 </description>
4179 </item>
4180
4181 <item>
4182 <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
4183 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
4184 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
4185 <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4186 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
4187 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
4188 has been
4189 &lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;
4190
4191 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
4192 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
4193 &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
4194 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
4195 based boot system. Tollef is
4196 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
4197 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
4198 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
4199 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
4200 at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;
4201
4202 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
4203 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
4204 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
4205 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
4206 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
4207 way forward.&lt;/p&gt;
4208
4209 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
4210 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
4211 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
4212 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
4213 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
4214 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
4215 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
4216 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
4217 with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
4218 </description>
4219 </item>
4220
4221 <item>
4222 <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
4223 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
4224 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
4225 <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
4226 <description>&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
4227 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
4228 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
4229 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
4230 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
4231 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
4232 /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
4233
4234 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4235 CONCURRENCY=makefile
4236 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4237
4238 &lt;p&gt;That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
4239 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
4240 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
4241 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
4242 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
4243 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
4244 make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;
4245
4246 &lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
4247 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
4248 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
4249 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
4250 the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4251
4252 &lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
4253 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
4254 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
4255 fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;
4256
4257 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4258 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4259 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
4260 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4261 </description>
4262 </item>
4263
4264 <item>
4265 <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
4266 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>
4267 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
4268 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4269 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
4270 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
4271 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
4272 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
4273 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
4274 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
4275 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
4276
4277 &lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
4278 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
4279 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
4280 </description>
4281 </item>
4282
4283 <item>
4284 <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
4285 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>
4286 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
4287 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4288 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
4289 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
4290 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
4291 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
4292 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
4293 the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
4294
4295 &lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
4296 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
4297 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
4298 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
4299 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
4300 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
4301 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
4302 upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
4303 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
4304 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
4305 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
4306 working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;
4307
4308 &lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
4309 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
4310 </description>
4311 </item>
4312
4313 <item>
4314 <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
4315 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>
4316 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
4317 <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
4318 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
4319 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
4320 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
4321 funded
4322 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
4323 gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
4324 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
4325 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
4326 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
4327 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;
4328
4329 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
4330 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
4331 boot:&lt;/p&gt;
4332
4333 &lt;ul&gt;
4334
4335 &lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;
4336
4337 &lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
4338 clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;
4339
4340 &lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
4341 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
4342 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;
4343
4344 &lt;/ul&gt;
4345
4346 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
4347 &lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
4348 Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.
4349
4350 &lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
4351 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
4352 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
4353 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
4354 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
4355 using this.&lt;/p&gt;
4356
4357 &lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
4358 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
4359 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
4360 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
4361 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
4362 this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
4363 insserv&#39;. Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4364 </description>
4365 </item>
4366
4367 <item>
4368 <title>BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</title>
4369 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</link>
4370 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</guid>
4371 <pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2009 23:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
4372 <description>&lt;p&gt;Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
4373 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
4374 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
4375 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
4376 dager siden kom
4377 &lt;a href=&quot;http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf&quot;&gt;siste
4378 rapport&lt;/a&gt;, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
4379 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
4380 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror&quot;&gt;BSA
4381 höftade Sverigesiffror&lt;/a&gt;, oppsummeres slik:&lt;/p&gt;
4382
4383 &lt;blockquote&gt;
4384 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
4385 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
4386 företag. &quot;Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
4387 exakta&quot;, säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
4388 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
4389
4390 &lt;p&gt;Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er &lt;a
4391 href=&quot;http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality&quot;&gt;BSA
4392 piracy figures need a shot of reality&lt;/a&gt; og &lt;a
4393 href=&quot;http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/&quot;&gt;Does The WIPO
4394 Copyright Treaty Work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4395
4396 &lt;p&gt;Fant lenkene via &lt;a
4397 href=&quot;http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242&quot;&gt;oppslag
4398 på Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4399 </description>
4400 </item>
4401
4402 <item>
4403 <title>IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</title>
4404 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</link>
4405 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</guid>
4406 <pubDate>Thu, 7 May 2009 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4407 <description>&lt;p&gt;Kom over
4408 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html&quot;&gt;interessante
4409 tall&lt;/a&gt; fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
4410 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
4411 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
4412 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
4413 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
4414 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.&lt;/p&gt;
4415 </description>
4416 </item>
4417
4418 <item>
4419 <title>Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</title>
4420 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</link>
4421 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</guid>
4422 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4423 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece&quot;&gt;Dagens
4424 IT melder&lt;/a&gt; at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
4425 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
4426 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
4427 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
4428 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
4429 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
4430 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
4431 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
4432 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
4433 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
4434 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
4435 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
4436 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
4437 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
4438 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
4439 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
4440 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
4441 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
4442 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.&lt;/p&gt;
4443
4444 &lt;p&gt;Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
4445 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
4446 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
4447 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
4448 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
4449 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
4450 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
4451 betydelige.&lt;/p&gt;
4452 </description>
4453 </item>
4454
4455 <item>
4456 <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
4457 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>
4458 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
4459 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4460 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
4461 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
4462 do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;
4463
4464 &lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
4465 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
4466 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
4467 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
4468 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
4469 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
4470 occurs. It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
4471 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
4472 &#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;. This tool has made it
4473 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
4474 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
4475
4476 &lt;p&gt;The second one is
4477 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
4478 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
4479 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
4480 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
4481 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
4482 and the company behind it is running
4483 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
4484 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
4485 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
4486 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
4487 X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
4488 Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;. The projects included in the
4489 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
4490 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;
4491
4492 &lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
4493 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
4494 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
4495 surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
4496 </description>
4497 </item>
4498
4499 <item>
4500 <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
4501 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>
4502 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
4503 <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4504 <description>&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
4505 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
4506 patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;. I completely disagree, as a
4507 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
4508 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
4509 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
4510 properties.&lt;/p&gt;
4511 </description>
4512 </item>
4513
4514 <item>
4515 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
4516 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
4517 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
4518 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4519 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
4520 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
4521 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
4522 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
4523 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
4524 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
4525 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
4526 application.&lt;/p&gt;
4527
4528 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
4529 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
4530 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
4531 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
4532 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
4533 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
4534 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
4535
4536 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
4537 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
4538 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
4539 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
4540
4541 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
4542 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
4543 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
4544 </description>
4545 </item>
4546
4547 <item>
4548 <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
4549 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>
4550 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
4551 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4552 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
4553 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
4554 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
4555 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
4556 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
4557 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
4558 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
4559 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
4560 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
4561 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
4562 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
4563 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
4564 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
4565 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
4566 now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4567 </description>
4568 </item>
4569
4570 <item>
4571 <title>Time for new LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
4572 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>
4573 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
4574 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4575 <description>&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
4576 optimal. There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
4577 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
4578 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
4579 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
4580 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
4581
4582 &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
4583 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
4584 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
4585 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
4586 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
4587 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
4588 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
4589 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
4590 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
4591 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
4592 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
4593 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
4594 specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;
4595
4596 &lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
4597 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
4598 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
4599 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;
4600
4601 &lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
4602 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;
4603
4604 &lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
4605 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
4606 new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
4607 </description>
4608 </item>
4609
4610 <item>
4611 <title>Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</title>
4612 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</link>
4613 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</guid>
4614 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
4615 <description>&lt;p&gt;Endelig er &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;
4616 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214&quot;&gt;Lenny&lt;/a&gt; gitt ut.
4617 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
4618 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
4619 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
4620 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; /
4621 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; ferdig
4622 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
4623 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
4624 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
4625 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
4626 &lt;tt&gt;insserv&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4627 </description>
4628 </item>
4629
4630 <item>
4631 <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
4632 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>
4633 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
4634 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
4635 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
4636 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
4637 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
4638 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
4639 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
4640 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
4641 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
4642 finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;
4643
4644 &lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
4645 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
4646 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
4647 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
4648 of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
4649 </description>
4650 </item>
4651
4652 <item>
4653 <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
4654 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>
4655 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
4656 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
4657 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
4658 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
4659 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
4660 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
4661 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
4662 notes are available on
4663 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
4664 Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
4665 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
4666 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
4667 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
4668 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
4669 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
4670 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
4671 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;
4672
4673 &lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
4674 be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
4675 </description>
4676 </item>
4677
4678 </channel>
4679 </rss>