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                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged debian</title>
                <description>Entries tagged debian</description>
                <link>../../</link>

        
        <item>
                <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
                <link>../../The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
notes are available on
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
                <link>../../Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</title>
                <link>../../Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Endelig er &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214&quot;&gt;Lenny&lt;/a&gt; gitt ut.
Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; /
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; ferdig
oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
&lt;tt&gt;insserv&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
                <link>../../Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
(mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
                <link>../../Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
                <link>../../Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
application.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
                <link>../../No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;.  I completely disagree, as a
patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
properties.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
                <link>../../Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
to report the source file name and line number where the problem
occurs.  It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
&#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;.  This tool has made it
trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.

&lt;p&gt;The second one is
&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
and the company behind it is running
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;.  The projects included in the
community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</title>
                <link>../../Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece&quot;&gt;Dagens
IT melder&lt;/a&gt; at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
betydelige.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</title>
                <link>../../IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 7 May 2009 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Kom over
&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html&quot;&gt;interessante
tall&lt;/a&gt; fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
(61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
(25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</title>
                <link>../../BSAs_p__stander_om_piratkopiering_m__ter_motstand.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../BSAs_p__stander_om_piratkopiering_m__ter_motstand.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2009 23:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
dager siden kom
&lt;a href=&quot;http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf&quot;&gt;siste
rapport&lt;/a&gt;, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror&quot;&gt;BSA
höftade Sverigesiffror&lt;/a&gt;, oppsummeres slik:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
företag. &quot;Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
exakta&quot;, säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er &lt;a
href=&quot;http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality&quot;&gt;BSA
piracy figures need a shot of reality&lt;/a&gt; og &lt;a
href=&quot;http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/&quot;&gt;Does The WIPO
Copyright Treaty Work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Fant lenkene via &lt;a
href=&quot;http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242&quot;&gt;oppslag
på Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
                <link>../../Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
funded
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
boot:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
   clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
   &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
   based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
&lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.

&lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
using this.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
insserv&#39;.  Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
                <link>../../Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
                <link>../../Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">../../Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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