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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Google_Drive_sync_using_grive_in_Debian.html">Automatic Google Drive sync using grive in Debian</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          4th October 2018
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>A few days, I rescued a Windows victim over to Debian.  To try to
  32 rescue the remains, I helped set up automatic sync with Google Drive.
  33 I did not find any sensible Debian package handling this
  34 automatically, so I rebuild the grive2 source from
  35 <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/">the Ubuntu UPD8 PPA</a> to do the
  36 task and added a autostart desktop entry and a small shell script to
  37 run in the background while the user is logged in to do the sync.
  38 Here is a sketch of the setup for future reference.</p>
  39
  40 <p>I first created <tt>~/googledrive</tt>, entered the directory and
  41 ran '<tt>grive -a</tt>' to authenticate the machine/user.  Next, I
  42 created a autostart hook in <tt>~/.config/autostart/grive.desktop</tt>
  43 to start the sync when the user log in:</p>
  44
  45 <p><blockquote><pre>
  46 [Desktop Entry]
  47 Name=Google drive autosync
  48 Type=Application
  49 Exec=/home/user/bin/grive-sync
  50 </pre></blockquote></p>
  51
  52 <p>Finally, I wrote the <tt>~/bin/grive-sync</tt> script to sync
  53 ~/googledrive/ with the files in Google Drive.</p>
  54
  55 <p><blockquote><pre>
  56 #!/bin/sh
  57 set -e
  58 cd ~/
  59 cleanup() {
  60     if [ "$syncpid" ] ; then
  61         kill $syncpid
  62     fi
  63 }
  64 trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT
  65 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh listen googledrive 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%" &
  66 syncpdi=$!
  67 while true; do
  68     if ! xhost >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
  69         echo "no DISPLAY, exiting as the user probably logged out"
  70         exit 1
  71     fi
  72     if [ ! -e /run/user/1000/grive-sync.sh_googledrive ] ; then
  73         /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh sync googledrive
  74     fi
  75     sleep 300
  76 done 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%"
  77 </pre></blockquote></p>
  78
  79 <p>Feel free to use the setup if you want.  It can be assumed to be
  80 GNU GPL v2 licensed (or any later version, at your leisure), but I
  81 doubt this code is possible to claim copyright on.</p>
  82
  83 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  84 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  85 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
  86
  87       </div>
  88       <div class="tags">
  89
  90
  91         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
  92
  93
  94       </div>
  95     </div>
  96     <div class="padding"></div>
  97
  98     <div class="entry">
  99       <div class="title">
 100         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_the_Kodi_API_to_play_Youtube_videos.html">Using the Kodi API to play Youtube videos</a>
 101       </div>
 102       <div class="date">
 103          2nd September 2018
 104       </div>
 105       <div class="body">
 106         <p>I continue to explore my Kodi installation, and today I wanted to
 107 tell it to play a youtube URL I received in a chat, without having to
 108 insert search terms using the on-screen keyboard.  After searching the
 109 web for API access to the Youtube plugin and testing a bit, I managed
 110 to find a recipe that worked.  If you got a kodi instance with its API
 111 available from http://kodihost/jsonrpc, you can try the following to
 112 have check out a nice cover band.</p>
 113
 114 <p><blockquote><pre>curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 115   --data-binary '{ "id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "Player.Open",
 116   "params": {"item": { "file":
 117   "plugin://plugin.video.youtube/play/?video_id=LuRGVM9O0qg" } } }' \
 118   http://projector.local/jsonrpc</pre></blockquote></p>
 119
 120 <p>I've extended kodi-stream program to take a video source as its
 121 first argument.  It can now handle direct video links, youtube links
 122 and 'desktop' to stream my desktop to Kodi.  It is almost like a
 123 Chromecast. :)</p>
 124
 125 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 126 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 127 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 128
 129       </div>
 130       <div class="tags">
 131
 132
 133         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 134
 135
 136       </div>
 137     </div>
 138     <div class="padding"></div>
 139
 140     <div class="entry">
 141       <div class="title">
 142         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html">Sharing images with friends and family using RSS and EXIF/XMP metadata</a>
 143       </div>
 144       <div class="date">
 145         31st July 2018
 146       </div>
 147       <div class="body">
 148         <p>For a while now, I have looked for a sensible way to share images
 149 with my family using a self hosted solution, as it is unacceptable to
 150 place images from my personal life under the control of strangers
 151 working for data hoarders like Google or Dropbox.  The last few days I
 152 have drafted an approach that might work out, and I would like to
 153 share it with you.  I would like to publish images on a server under
 154 my control, and point some Internet connected display units using some
 155 free and open standard to the images I published.  As my primary
 156 language is not limited to ASCII, I need to store metadata using
 157 UTF-8.  Many years ago, I hoped to find a digital photo frame capable
 158 of reading a RSS feed with image references (aka using the
 159 &lt;enclosure&gt; RSS tag), but was unable to find a current supplier
 160 of such frames.  In the end I gave up that approach.</p>
 161
 162 <p>Some months ago, I discovered that
 163 <a href="https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/">XScreensaver</a> is able to
 164 read images from a RSS feed, and used it to set up a screen saver on
 165 my home info screen, showing images from the Daily images feed from
 166 NASA.  This proved to work well.  More recently I discovered that
 167 <a href="https://kodi.tv">Kodi</a> (both using
 168 <a href="https://www.openelec.tv/">OpenELEC</a> and
 169 <a href="https://libreelec.tv">LibreELEC</a>) provide the
 170 <a href="https://github.com/grinsted/script.screensaver.feedreader">Feedreader</a>
 171 screen saver capable of reading a RSS feed with images and news.  For
 172 fun, I used it this summer to test Kodi on my parents TV by hooking up
 173 a Raspberry PI unit with LibreELEC, and wanted to provide them with a
 174 screen saver showing selected pictures from my selection.</p>
 175
 176 <p>Armed with motivation and a test photo frame, I set out to generate
 177 a RSS feed for the Kodi instance.  I adjusted my <a
 178 href="https://freedombox.org/">Freedombox</a> instance, created
 179 /var/www/html/privatepictures/, wrote a small Perl script to extract
 180 title and description metadata from the photo files and generate the
 181 RSS file.  I ended up using Perl instead of python, as the
 182 libimage-exiftool-perl Debian package seemed to handle the EXIF/XMP
 183 tags I ended up using, while python3-exif did not.  The relevant EXIF
 184 tags only support ASCII, so I had to find better alternatives.  XMP
 185 seem to have the support I need.</p>
 186
 187 <p>I am a bit unsure which EXIF/XMP tags to use, as I would like to
 188 use tags that can be easily added/updated using normal free software
 189 photo managing software.  I ended up using the tags set using this
 190 exiftool command, as these tags can also be set using digiKam:</p>
 191
 192 <blockquote><pre>
 193 exiftool -headline='The RSS image title' \
 194   -description='The RSS image description.' \
 195   -subject+=for-family photo.jpeg
 196 </pre></blockquote>
 197
 198 <p>I initially tried the "-title" and "keyword" tags, but they were
 199 invisible in digiKam, so I changed to "-headline" and "-subject".  I
 200 use the keyword/subject 'for-family' to flag that the photo should be
 201 shared with my family.  Images with this keyword set are located and
 202 copied into my Freedombox for the RSS generating script to find.</p>
 203
 204 <p>Are there better ways to do this?  Get in touch if you have better
 205 suggestions.</p>
 206
 207 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 208 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 209 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 210
 211       </div>
 212       <div class="tags">
 213
 214
 215         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 216
 217
 218       </div>
 219     </div>
 220     <div class="padding"></div>
 221
 222     <div class="entry">
 223       <div class="title">
 224         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">Simple streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using GStreamer and RTP</a>
 225       </div>
 226       <div class="date">
 227         12th July 2018
 228       </div>
 229       <div class="body">
 230         <p>Last night, I wrote
 231 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">a
 232 recipe to stream a Linux desktop using VLC to a instance of Kodi</a>.
 233 During the day I received valuable feedback, and thanks to the
 234 suggestions I have been able to rewrite the recipe into a much simpler
 235 approach requiring no setup at all.  It is a single script that take
 236 care of it all.</p>
 237
 238 <p>This new script uses GStreamer instead of VLC to capture the
 239 desktop and stream it to Kodi.  This fixed the video quality issue I
 240 saw initially.  It further removes the need to add a m3u file on the
 241 Kodi machine, as it instead connects to
 242 <a href="https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v8">the JSON-RPC API in
 243 Kodi</a> and simply ask Kodi to play from the stream created using
 244 GStreamer.  Streaming the desktop to Kodi now become trivial.  Copy
 245 the script below, run it with the DNS name or IP address of the kodi
 246 server to stream to as the only argument, and watch your screen show
 247 up on the Kodi screen.  Note, it depend on multicast on the local
 248 network, so if you need to stream outside the local network, the
 249 script must be modified.  Also note, I have no idea if audio work, as
 250 I only care about the picture part.</p>
 251
 252 <blockquote><pre>
 253 #!/bin/sh
 254 #
 255 # Stream the Linux desktop view to Kodi.  See
 256 # http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html
 257 # for backgorund information.
 258
 259 # Make sure the stream is stopped in Kodi and the gstreamer process is
 260 # killed if something go wrong (for example if curl is unable to find the
 261 # kodi server).  Do the same when interrupting this script.
 262 kodicmd() {
 263     host="$1"
 264     cmd="$2"
 265     params="$3"
 266     curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 267          --data-binary "{ \"id\": 1, \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\", \"method\": \"$cmd\", \"params\": $params }" \
 268          "http://$host/jsonrpc"
 269 }
 270 cleanup() {
 271     if [ -n "$kodihost" ] ; then
 272         # Stop the playing when we end
 273         playerid=$(kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.GetActivePlayers "{}" |
 274                             jq .result[].playerid)
 275         kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Stop "{ \"playerid\" : $playerid }" > /dev/null
 276     fi
 277     if [ "$gstpid" ] && kill -0 "$gstpid" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
 278         kill "$gstpid"
 279     fi
 280 }
 281 trap cleanup EXIT INT
 282
 283 if [ -n "$1" ]; then
 284     kodihost=$1
 285     shift
 286 else
 287     kodihost=kodi.local
 288 fi
 289
 290 mcast=239.255.0.1
 291 mcastport=1234
 292 mcastttl=1
 293
 294 pasrc=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | \
 295   cut -d" " -f2|head -1)
 296 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
 297   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
 298   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
 299   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
 300   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
 301   udpsink host=$mcast port=$mcastport ttl-mc=$mcastttl auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
 302   pulsesrc device=$pasrc ! audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux. \
 303   > /dev/null 2>&1 &
 304 gstpid=$!
 305
 306 # Give stream a second to get going
 307 sleep 1
 308
 309 # Ask kodi to start streaming using its JSON-RPC API
 310 kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Open \
 311         "{\"item\": { \"file\": \"udp://@$mcast:$mcastport\" } }" > /dev/null
 312
 313 # wait for gst to end
 314 wait "$gstpid"
 315 </pre></blockquote>
 316
 317 <p>I hope you find the approach useful.  I know I do.</p>
 318
 319 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 320 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 321 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 322
 323       </div>
 324       <div class="tags">
 325
 326
 327         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 328
 329
 330       </div>
 331     </div>
 332     <div class="padding"></div>
 333
 334     <div class="entry">
 335       <div class="title">
 336         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP</a>
 337       </div>
 338       <div class="date">
 339         12th July 2018
 340       </div>
 341       <div class="body">
 342         <p>PS: See
 343 <ahref="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">the
 344 followup post</a> for a even better approach.</p>
 345
 346 <p>A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
 347 my projector connected to Kodi.  I sadly had to admit that I had no
 348 idea, as it was a task I never had tried.  Since then, I have been
 349 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
 350 install on either side.  Today I found a way that seem to kind of
 351 work.  Not great, but it is a start.</p>
 352
 353 <p>I had a look at several approaches, for example
 354 <a href="https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming">using uPnP
 355 DLNA as described in 2011</a>, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
 356 local storage enough to store the stream locally.  This is not going
 357 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
 358 impossible for my friend to get working.</p>
 359
 360 <p>Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
 361 video stream that Kodi could play.  Preferably using
 362 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
 363 side when starting such stream.  Unfortunately, the only recipe I
 364 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
 365 seem to not be supported by Kodi.</p>
 366
 367 <p>On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working!  Unfortunately I
 368 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
 369 sending command and the file on the Kodi server.  But it is showing my
 370 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
 371 the programs I work on.</p>
 372
 373 <p>I did not spend much time investigating codeces.  I combined the
 374 rtp and rtsp recipes from
 375 <a href="https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/">the
 376 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples</a>, and was able to get
 377 this working on the desktop/streaming end.</p>
 378
 379 <blockquote><pre>
 380 vlc screen:// --sout \
 381   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp}'
 382 </pre></blockquote>
 383
 384 <p>I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
 385 same IP address:</p>
 386
 387 <blockquote><pre>
 388 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp \
 389   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
 390 </pre></blockquote>
 391
 392 <p>Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address.  As far
 393 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work.  In other
 394 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
 395 to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
 396 recipe.  To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
 397 file while the VLC stream is running.  The desktop then show up in my
 398 big screen. :)</p>
 399
 400 <p>When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
 401 the audio quality is really bad.  No idea if the problem is package
 402 loss or bad parameters for the transcode.  I do not know VLC nor Kodi
 403 enough to tell.</p>
 404
 405 <p><strong>Update 2018-07-12</strong>: Johannes Schauer send me a few
 406 succestions and reminded me about an important step.  The "screen:"
 407 input source is only available once the vlc-plugin-access-extra
 408 package is installed on Debian.  Without it, you will see this error
 409 message: "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'screen://'.  Check the log
 410 for details."  He further found that it is possible to drop some parts
 411 of the VLC command line to reduce the amount of hardcoded information.
 412 It is also useful to consider using cvlc to avoid having the VLC
 413 window in the desktop view.  In sum, this give us this command line on
 414 the source end
 415
 416 <blockquote><pre>
 417 cvlc screen:// --sout \
 418   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8080/}'
 419 </pre></blockquote>
 420
 421 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
 422
 423 <blockquote><pre>
 424 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/ \
 425   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
 426 </pre></blockquote>
 427
 428 <p>Still bad image quality, though.  But I did discover that streaming
 429 a DVD using dvdsimple:///dev/dvd as the source had excellent video and
 430 audio quality, so I guess the issue is in the input or transcoding
 431 parts, not the rtsp part.  I've tried to change the vb and ab
 432 parameters to use more bandwidth, but it did not make a
 433 difference.</p>
 434
 435 <p>I further received a suggestion from Einar Haraldseid to try using
 436 gstreamer instead of VLC, and this proved to work great!  He also
 437 provided me with the trick to get Kodi to use a multicast stream as
 438 its source.  By using this monstrous oneliner, I can stream my desktop
 439 with good video quality in reasonable framerate to the 239.255.0.1
 440 multicast address on port 1234:
 441
 442 <blockquote><pre>
 443 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
 444   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
 445   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
 446   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
 447   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
 448   udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=1 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
 449   pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | \
 450     grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' |  cut -d" " -f2|head -1) ! \
 451   audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
 452 </pre></blockquote>
 453
 454 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
 455
 456 <blockquote><pre>
 457 echo udp://@239.255.0.1:1234 \
 458   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
 459 </pre></blockquote>
 460
 461 <p>Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source.  It might not
 462 pick the one you need.  This approach will of course lead to trouble
 463 if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
 464 Note the ttl-mc=1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
 465 local network.  If the value is increased, your screen will be
 466 broadcasted further, one network "hop" for each increase (read up on
 467 multicast to learn more. :)!</p>
 468
 469 <p>Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
 470 could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
 471 The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
 472 seem to be doing a better job.</p>
 473
 474 <blockquote><pre>
 475 cvlc screen:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=239.255.0.1,port=1234,sdp=sap}'
 476 </pre></blockquote>
 477
 478 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 479 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 480 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 481
 482       </div>
 483       <div class="tags">
 484
 485
 486         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 487
 488
 489       </div>
 490     </div>
 491     <div class="padding"></div>
 492
 493     <div class="entry">
 494       <div class="title">
 495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2018?</a>
 496       </div>
 497       <div class="date">
 498          9th July 2018
 499       </div>
 500       <div class="body">
 501         <p>Five years ago,
 502 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">I
 503 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was</a>, by
 504 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive.  Since
 505 then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
 506 the task a lot easier.  This made me want to repeat the measurement,
 507 to see how much things changed.  Here are the new numbers, for
 508 unstable only this time:
 509
 510 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 511
 512 <pre>
 513   count MIME type
 514   ----- -----------------------
 515      56 image/jpeg
 516      55 image/png
 517      49 image/tiff
 518      48 image/gif
 519      39 image/bmp
 520      38 text/plain
 521      37 audio/mpeg
 522      34 application/ogg
 523      33 audio/x-flac
 524      32 audio/x-mp3
 525      30 audio/x-wav
 526      30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
 527      29 image/x-portable-pixmap
 528      27 inode/directory
 529      27 image/x-portable-bitmap
 530      27 audio/x-mpeg
 531      26 application/x-ogg
 532      25 audio/x-mpegurl
 533      25 audio/ogg
 534      24 text/html
 535 </pre>
 536
 537 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot: "cat
 538 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk '/^
 539 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"</p>
 540
 541 <p>It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
 542 as the most announced supported MIME type.  These days, thanks to the
 543 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
 544 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
 545 MIME type of the file using "file --mime &lt;filename&gt;", and then
 546 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
 547 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using "appstreamcli
 548 what-provides mimetype &lt;mime-type&gt;.  For example if you, like
 549 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
 550 list like this:</p>
 551
 552 <p><blockquote><pre>
 553 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
 554 Package: anjuta
 555 Package: audacious
 556 Package: baobab
 557 Package: cervisia
 558 Package: chirp
 559 Package: dolphin
 560 Package: doublecmd-common
 561 Package: easytag
 562 Package: enlightenment
 563 Package: ephoto
 564 Package: filelight
 565 Package: gwenview
 566 Package: k4dirstat
 567 Package: kaffeine
 568 Package: kdesvn
 569 Package: kid3
 570 Package: kid3-qt
 571 Package: nautilus
 572 Package: nemo
 573 Package: pcmanfm
 574 Package: pcmanfm-qt
 575 Package: qweborf
 576 Package: ranger
 577 Package: sirikali
 578 Package: spacefm
 579 Package: spacefm
 580 Package: vifm
 581 %
 582 </pre></blockquote></p>
 583
 584 <p>Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
 585 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:</p>
 586
 587 <p><blockquote><pre>
 588 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/vnd.sketchup.skp
 589 Could not find component providing 'mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp'.
 590 %
 591 </pre></blockquote></p>
 592
 593 <p>Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
 594 format:</p>
 595
 596 <p><blockquote><pre>
 597 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/sla|grep Package
 598 Package: cura
 599 Package: meshlab
 600 Package: printrun
 601 %
 602 </pre></blockquote></p>
 603
 604 <p>PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.</p>
 605
 606 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 607 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 608 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 609
 610       </div>
 611       <div class="tags">
 612
 613
 614         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 615
 616
 617       </div>
 618     </div>
 619     <div class="padding"></div>
 620
 621     <div class="entry">
 622       <div class="title">
 623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html">Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...</a>
 624       </div>
 625       <div class="date">
 626          8th July 2018
 627       </div>
 628       <div class="body">
 629         <p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
 630 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
 631 space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'.  I normally
 632 would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install &lt;somepackages&gt;' to
 633 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
 634 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
 635 Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
 636 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually.  I concluded
 637 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
 638 decided to see if I could automate it.  I came up with this small
 639 script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':</p>
 640
 641 <p><blockquote><pre>
 642 #!/bin/sh
 643 #
 644 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
 645 # upgradable package in one lump.  Fetching packages to upgrade using
 646 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
 647 # flag for manual/automatic.
 648
 649 set -e
 650
 651 ignore() {
 652     if [ "$1" ]; then
 653         grep -v "$1"
 654     else
 655         cat
 656     fi
 657 }
 658
 659 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
 660     echo "Upgrading $p"
 661     apt clean
 662     apt install --download-only -y $p
 663     for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
 664         if [ -e "$f" ]; then
 665             dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
 666             break
 667         fi
 668     done
 669 done
 670 </pre></blockquote></p>
 671
 672 <p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
 673 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
 674 downloaded packages using dpkg.  The idea is to upgrade packages
 675 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
 676 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency).  To
 677 use it, simply run it as root from the command line.  If it fail, try
 678 'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again.  This
 679 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
 680 packages.  dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.</p>
 681
 682 <p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
 683 upgrade.  The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
 684 the packages that are simply too large to unpack.  Today this was
 685 'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
 686 problems earlier (like TeX).</p>
 687
 688 <p>Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
 689 alternative ways to handle this.  The "unattended-upgrades
 690 --minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
 691 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
 692 first.  It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
 693 Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
 694 the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.</p>
 695
 696 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 697 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 698 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 699
 700       </div>
 701       <div class="tags">
 702
 703
 704         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 705
 706
 707       </div>
 708     </div>
 709     <div class="padding"></div>
 710
 711     <div class="entry">
 712       <div class="title">
 713         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html">Version 3.1 of Cura, the 3D print slicer, is now in Debian</a>
 714       </div>
 715       <div class="date">
 716         13th February 2018
 717       </div>
 718       <div class="body">
 719         <p>A new version of the
 720 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">3D printer slicer
 721 software Cura</a>, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
 722 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid).  I hope you find it
 723 useful.  It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
 724 enter testing tomorrow.  See the
 725 <a href="https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes">release
 726 notes</a> for the list of bug fixes and new features.  Version 3.2
 727 was announced 6 days ago.  We will try to get it into Debian as
 728 well.</p>
 729
 730 <p>More information related to 3D printing is available on the
 731 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting">3D printing</a> and
 732 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer">3D printer</a> wiki pages
 733 in Debian.</p>
 734
 735 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 736 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 737 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 738
 739       </div>
 740       <div class="tags">
 741
 742
 743         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 744
 745
 746       </div>
 747     </div>
 748     <div class="padding"></div>
 749
 750     <div class="entry">
 751       <div class="title">
 752         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html">Cura, the nice 3D print slicer, is now in Debian Unstable</a>
 753       </div>
 754       <div class="date">
 755         17th December 2017
 756       </div>
 757       <div class="body">
 758         <p>After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
 759 that the nice and user friendly 3D printer slicer software Cura just
 760 entered Debian Unstable.  It consist of five packages,
 761 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">cura</a>,
 762 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine">cura-engine</a>,
 763 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus">libarcus</a>,
 764 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials">fdm-materials</a>,
 765 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar">libsavitar</a> and
 766 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium">uranium</a>.  The last
 767 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday.  This should make
 768 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
 769 3D printers.  My nearest 3D printer is an Ultimaker 2+, so it will
 770 make life easier for at least me. :)</p>
 771
 772 <p>The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
 773 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages.  With the introduction
 774 of Cura, Debian is up to three 3D printer slicers at your service,
 775 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa.  If you own or have access to a 3D
 776 printer, give it a go. :)</p>
 777
 778 <p>The 3D printer software is maintained by the 3D printer Debian
 779 team, flocking together on the
 780 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general">3dprinter-general</a>
 781 mailing list and the
 782 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting">#debian-3dprinting</a>
 783 IRC channel.</p>
 784
 785 <p>The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
 786 version 3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
 787 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.</p>
 788
 789       </div>
 790       <div class="tags">
 791
 792
 793         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 794
 795
 796       </div>
 797     </div>
 798     <div class="padding"></div>
 799
 800     <div class="entry">
 801       <div class="title">
 802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</a>
 803       </div>
 804       <div class="date">
 805          9th October 2017
 806       </div>
 807       <div class="body">
 808         <p>At my nearby maker space,
 809 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
 810 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
 811 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
 812 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
 813 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
 814 as the software involved,
 815 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
 816 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
 817 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
 818 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
 819 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
 820 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
 821 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
 822
 823 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
 824 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
 825 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
 826 on
 827 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 828 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
 829
 830 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
 831 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
 832 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
 833 upstream version.</p>
 834
 835 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
 836 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
 837 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
 838 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
 839 Debian, check out
 840 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
 841 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
 842 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
 843
 844 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 845 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 846 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 847
 848       </div>
 849       <div class="tags">
 850
 851
 852         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 853
 854
 855       </div>
 856     </div>
 857     <div class="padding"></div>
 858
 859     <div class="entry">
 860       <div class="title">
 861         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</a>
 862       </div>
 863       <div class="date">
 864         29th September 2017
 865       </div>
 866       <div class="body">
 867         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
 868 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
 869 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
 870 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
 871 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
 872 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
 873 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
 874 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
 875 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
 876 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
 877 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
 878 listen.</p>
 879
 880 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
 881 visualizing this information up and running for
 882 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
 883 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
 884 library.  The solution is based on the
 885 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
 886 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
 887 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
 888 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
 889 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
 890 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
 891 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
 892 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
 893
 894 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
 895 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
 896 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
 897 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
 898 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
 899 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
 900 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
 901 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
 902
 903 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
 904 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
 905 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
 906 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
 907 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
 908 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
 909 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
 910 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
 911 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
 912 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
 913 mentioned in
 914 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
 915 issue for the topic</a>.
 916
 917 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
 918
 919       </div>
 920       <div class="tags">
 921
 922
 923         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 924
 925
 926       </div>
 927     </div>
 928     <div class="padding"></div>
 929
 930     <div class="entry">
 931       <div class="title">
 932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</a>
 933       </div>
 934       <div class="date">
 935         24th September 2017
 936       </div>
 937       <div class="body">
 938         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
 939 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
 940 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
 941 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
 942 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
 943 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
 944 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
 945 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
 946 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
 947
 948 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
 949 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
 950 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
 951 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
 952
 953 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
 954 clone of two python scripts:</p>
 955
 956 <ol>
 957
 958 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
 959   testing).</li>
 960
 961 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
 962   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
 963
 964 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
 965   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
 966
 967 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
 968
 969 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 970   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
 971   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
 972
 973 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 974   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
 975
 976 </ol>
 977
 978 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
 979 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
 980 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
 981 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
 982 very cheaply
 983 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
 984 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
 985 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
 986
 987 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
 988 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
 989 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
 990 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
 991 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
 992 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
 993 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
 994 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
 995
 996 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
 997 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
 998 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
 999 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
1000 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
1001 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
1002 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
1003 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
1004 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
1005 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
1006 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
1007 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
1008
1009       </div>
1010       <div class="tags">
1011
1012
1013         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1014
1015
1016       </div>
1017     </div>
1018     <div class="padding"></div>
1019
1020     <div class="entry">
1021       <div class="title">
1022         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a>
1023       </div>
1024       <div class="date">
1025          9th August 2017
1026       </div>
1027       <div class="body">
1028         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
1029 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
1030 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
1031 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
1032 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
1033 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
1034 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
1035
1036 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
1037 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
1038 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
1039 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
1040 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
1041 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
1042 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
1043 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
1044 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
1045 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
1046 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
1047 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
1048 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
1049
1050 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
1051 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
1052 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
1053 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
1054 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
1055 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
1056 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
1057 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
1058 collector for a few days now.</p>
1059
1060 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
1061
1062 <ol>
1063
1064 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
1065
1066 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
1067 <a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/</a>,</li>
1068
1069 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
1070
1071 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
1072 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
1073 found a GSM station).</li>
1074
1075 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
1076
1077 </ol>
1078
1079 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
1080 running, I decided to package
1081 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
1082 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
1083 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
1084 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
1085 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
1086
1087 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
1088 commercial tools like
1089 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
1090 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
1091 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
1092 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
1093 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
1094 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
1095 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
1096 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
1097 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
1098 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
1099 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
1100 of government officials...</p>
1101
1102 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
1103 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
1104 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
1105 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
1106 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
1107 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
1108 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
1109 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
1110 one frequency?</p>
1111
1112       </div>
1113       <div class="tags">
1114
1115
1116         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1117
1118
1119       </div>
1120     </div>
1121     <div class="padding"></div>
1122
1123     <div class="entry">
1124       <div class="title">
1125         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available</a>
1126       </div>
1127       <div class="date">
1128         25th July 2017
1129       </div>
1130       <div class="body">
1131         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
1132
1133 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
1134 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
1135 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
1136 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
1137 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
1138 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
1139 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
1140 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
1141 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
1142 as a web page</a>.</p>
1143
1144 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
1145 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
1146 in
1147 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
1148 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
1149 and
1150 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
1151 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
1152 project.  I hope
1153 "<a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html">Håndbok
1154 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
1155
1156       </div>
1157       <div class="tags">
1158
1159
1160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1161
1162
1163       </div>
1164     </div>
1165     <div class="padding"></div>
1166
1167     <div class="entry">
1168       <div class="title">
1169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</a>
1170       </div>
1171       <div class="date">
1172          3rd June 2017
1173       </div>
1174       <div class="body">
1175         <p><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html">Aftenposten
1176 melder i dag</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
1177 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
1178 like.  Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
1179 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
1180 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium</a> ville gjort en bedre
1181 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet.  Det kan se slik ut.</p>
1182
1183 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:</p>
1184
1185 <blockquote>
1186 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
1187 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
1188 for eksempel flykningekrisen.</p>
1189
1190 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
1191 på temaet:</p>
1192 <ol>
1193 <li>Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
1194 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
1195 </ol>
1196
1197 </blockquote>
1198
1199 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:</p>
1200
1201 <blockquote>
1202 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
1203 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
1204 til dømes *flykningekrisen.</p>
1205
1206 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
1207 temaet:</p>
1208
1209 <ol>
1210 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC</li>
1211 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015</li>
1212 </ol>
1213
1214 </blockquote>
1215
1216 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
1217 ekstra språksjekk.  Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
1218 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen.  Jeg mistenker dog at
1219 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
1220 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
1221 det er kanskje flisespikking.  Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
1222 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.</p>
1223
1224       </div>
1225       <div class="tags">
1226
1227
1228         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
1229
1230
1231       </div>
1232     </div>
1233     <div class="padding"></div>
1234
1235     <div class="entry">
1236       <div class="title">
1237         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
1238       </div>
1239       <div class="date">
1240          9th March 2017
1241       </div>
1242       <div class="body">
1243         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
1244 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
1245 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
1246 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
1247 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
1248 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
1249 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
1250 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
1251
1252 <p><blockquote>
1253 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
1254 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
1255 </blockquote></p>
1256
1257 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
1258 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
1259 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
1260 are noticed.</p>
1261
1262 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
1263 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
1264 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
1265 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
1266 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
1267 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
1268
1269 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
1270 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
1271 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
1272 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
1273 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
1274 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
1275
1276 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
1277
1278 <p><blockquote><pre>
1279 [...]
1280 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
1281 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
1282         opts:   rw,vers=3,rsize=65536,wsize=65536,namlen=255,acregmin=3,acregmax=60,acdirmin=30,acdirmax=60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=129.240.3.145,mountvers=3,mountport=4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
1283         age:    7863311
1284         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
1285         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
1286         events: 61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
1287         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
1288         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
1289         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
1290         per-op statistics
1291                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1292              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
1293              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
1294               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
1295               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
1296             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
1297                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
1298                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
1299               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
1300                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
1301              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
1302                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
1303               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
1304                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
1305               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
1306                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
1307              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
1308          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
1309               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
1310               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
1311             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
1312               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1313
1314 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
1315 [...]
1316 </pre></blockquote></p>
1317
1318 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
1319 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
1320 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
1321 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
1322 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
1323 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
1324 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
1325 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
1326 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
1327 mount options.</p>
1328
1329 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
1330 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
1331 But according to
1332 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
1333 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
1334 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
1335 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
1336 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
1337 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
1338
1339 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
1340 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
1341 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
1342 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
1343 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
1344
1345       </div>
1346       <div class="tags">
1347
1348
1349         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1350
1351
1352       </div>
1353     </div>
1354     <div class="padding"></div>
1355
1356     <div class="entry">
1357       <div class="title">
1358         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</a>
1359       </div>
1360       <div class="date">
1361          3rd March 2017
1362       </div>
1363       <div class="body">
1364         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
1365 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
1366 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
1367 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
1368 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
1369 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
1370 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
1371 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
1372 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
1373
1374 <p><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
1375
1376 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
1377 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
1378 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
1379 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
1380 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
1381 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
1382 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
1383 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
1384
1385       </div>
1386       <div class="tags">
1387
1388
1389         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1390
1391
1392       </div>
1393     </div>
1394     <div class="padding"></div>
1395
1396     <div class="entry">
1397       <div class="title">
1398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
1399       </div>
1400       <div class="date">
1401          1st March 2017
1402       </div>
1403       <div class="body">
1404         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
1405 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
1406 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
1407 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
1408 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
1409 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
1410 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
1411 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
1412 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
1413 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
1414 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1415
1416 <blockquote><pre>
1417 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1418   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1419   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1420      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1421      sleep 1; \
1422   done
1423 300
1424 0+1 oppføringer inn
1425 0+1 oppføringer ut
1426 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
1427 4
1428 8
1429 12
1430 17
1431 21
1432 %
1433 </pre></blockquote>
1434
1435 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
1436 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
1437 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
1438 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1439
1440 <blockquote><pre>
1441 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1442   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1443   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1444      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1445      sleep 1; \
1446   done
1447 1079
1448 0+1 oppføringer inn
1449 0+1 oppføringer ut
1450 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
1451 433
1452 1028
1453 1031
1454 1035
1455 1038
1456 %
1457 </pre></blockquote>
1458
1459 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
1460 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
1461
1462 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
1463 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
1464 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
1465 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
1466 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
1467 post.</p>
1468
1469       </div>
1470       <div class="tags">
1471
1472
1473         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1474
1475
1476       </div>
1477     </div>
1478     <div class="padding"></div>
1479
1480     <div class="entry">
1481       <div class="title">
1482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
1483       </div>
1484       <div class="date">
1485          9th January 2017
1486       </div>
1487       <div class="body">
1488         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
1489 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
1490 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
1491 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
1492 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
1493 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
1494 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
1495 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
1496 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
1497 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
1498 this:
1499
1500 <p><pre>
1501 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1502  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
1503  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
1504  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
1505  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
1506  5  he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48)  3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.857 ms
1507  6  ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39)  0.662 ms  0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23)  0.622 ms
1508  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
1509  8  * * *
1510  9  * * *
1511 [...]
1512 </pre></p>
1513
1514 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
1515 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
1516 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
1517 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
1518 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
1519 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
1520 traceroute request.</p>
1521
1522 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
1523 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
1524 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
1525 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
1526 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
1527
1528 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
1529 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
1530 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
1531 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
1532 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
1533 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
1534 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
1535 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
1536 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
1537
1538 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
1539 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
1540 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
1541 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
1542 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
1543 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
1544 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
1545 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
1546 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
1547 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
1548 render the page (in HAR format using
1549 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
1550 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
1551 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
1552 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
1553 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
1554
1555 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
1556 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
1557
1558 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
1559 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
1560 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
1561 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
1562 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
1563 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
1564 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
1565 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
1566 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
1567 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
1568 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
1569 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
1570 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
1571 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
1572
1573 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
1574 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1575
1576 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
1577 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
1578 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
1579 question.
1580 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
1581 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
1582 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
1583 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
1584 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
1585 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
1586 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
1587
1588 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
1589 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1590
1591 <p>In the process, I came across the
1592 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
1593 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
1594 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
1595 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
1596 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
1597 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
1598 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
1599 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
1600 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
1601 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
1602 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
1603 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
1604 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
1605 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
1606
1607 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
1608 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
1609
1610 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
1611 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
1612 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
1613 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
1614
1615 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
1616 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
1617 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
1618 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
1619 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
1620 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
1621 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
1622
1623 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
1624 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
1625 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
1626 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
1627 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
1628 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
1629 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
1630
1631 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
1632 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
1633 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
1634 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
1635
1636 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1637 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1638 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1639
1640       </div>
1641       <div class="tags">
1642
1643
1644         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1645
1646
1647       </div>
1648     </div>
1649     <div class="padding"></div>
1650
1651     <div class="entry">
1652       <div class="title">
1653         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
1654       </div>
1655       <div class="date">
1656         23rd December 2016
1657       </div>
1658       <div class="body">
1659         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
1660 readers probably know, I have been working on the
1661 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
1662 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
1663 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
1664 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
1665 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
1666 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
1667 metadata format.  And today,
1668 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
1669 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
1670 ie using fnmatch():</p>
1671
1672 <p><pre>
1673 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
1674   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
1675 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
1676 Name: pymissile
1677 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
1678 Package: pymissile
1679 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
1680 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
1681 Name: libnxt
1682 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
1683 Package: libnxt
1684 ---
1685 Identifier: t2n [generic]
1686 Name: t2n
1687 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
1688 Package: t2n
1689 ---
1690 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
1691 Name: python-nxt
1692 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
1693 Package: python-nxt
1694 ---
1695 Identifier: nbc [generic]
1696 Name: nbc
1697 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
1698 Package: nbc
1699 %
1700 </pre></p>
1701
1702 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
1703 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
1704
1705 <p><pre>
1706 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
1707 pymissile
1708 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
1709 libnxt
1710 nbc
1711 python-nxt
1712 t2n
1713 %
1714 </pre></p>
1715
1716 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
1717 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
1718
1719 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
1720 make the most of the hardware they have, please
1721 help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
1722 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
1723 documented in the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such
1724 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
1725 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
1726 mostly related to USB dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware
1727 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
1728 part of my involvement in
1729 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
1730 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
1731 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
1732 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
1733 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
1734 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
1735 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
1736 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
1737 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
1738
1739 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1740 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1741 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1742
1743       </div>
1744       <div class="tags">
1745
1746
1747         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1748
1749
1750       </div>
1751     </div>
1752     <div class="padding"></div>
1753
1754     <div class="entry">
1755       <div class="title">
1756         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
1757       </div>
1758       <div class="date">
1759         20th December 2016
1760       </div>
1761       <div class="body">
1762         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
1763 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
1764 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
1765 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
1766 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
1767 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
1768 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
1769 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
1770 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
1771 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
1772
1773 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
1774
1775 <p><pre>
1776 % isenkram-lookup
1777 bluez
1778 cheese
1779 ethtool
1780 fprintd
1781 fprintd-demo
1782 gkrellm-thinkbat
1783 hdapsd
1784 libpam-fprintd
1785 pidgin-blinklight
1786 thinkfan
1787 tlp
1788 tp-smapi-dkms
1789 tp-smapi-source
1790 tpb
1791 %
1792 </pre></p>
1793
1794 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
1795 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
1796 I have all the firmware my machine need:
1797
1798 <p><pre>
1799 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1800 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
1801 %
1802 </pre></p>
1803
1804 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
1805 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
1806 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
1807 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
1808 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
1809 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
1810 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
1811 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
1812
1813 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
1814 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
1815 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
1816
1817 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
1818 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
1819 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
1820 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
1821 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
1822 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
1823 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
1824 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
1825 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
1826 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
1827 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
1828 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
1829 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
1830 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
1831 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
1832 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
1833 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
1834 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
1835 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
1836 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
1837 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
1838 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
1839 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
1840 zd1211-firmware</p>
1841
1842 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
1843 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
1844 maintainer to
1845 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
1846 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
1847 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
1848 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
1849
1850 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
1851 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
1852 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
1853 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
1854 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
1855
1856       </div>
1857       <div class="tags">
1858
1859
1860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1861
1862
1863       </div>
1864     </div>
1865     <div class="padding"></div>
1866
1867     <div class="entry">
1868       <div class="title">
1869         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
1870       </div>
1871       <div class="date">
1872         11th December 2016
1873       </div>
1874       <div class="body">
1875         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
1876
1877 <p>In my early years, I played
1878 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
1879 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
1880 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
1881 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
1882 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
1883 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
1884 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
1885 small.</p>
1886
1887 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
1888 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
1889 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
1890 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
1891 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
1892 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
1893 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
1894 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
1895 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
1896
1897 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
1898 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
1899 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
1900 advantages of the
1901 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
1902 where information about each planet is easily available with common
1903 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
1904 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
1905 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
1906 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
1907 after less then a week.</p>
1908
1909 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
1910 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
1911 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
1912
1913 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1914 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1915 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1916
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="tags">
1919
1920
1921         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1922
1923
1924       </div>
1925     </div>
1926     <div class="padding"></div>
1927
1928     <div class="entry">
1929       <div class="title">
1930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
1931       </div>
1932       <div class="date">
1933         25th November 2016
1934       </div>
1935       <div class="body">
1936         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
1937 installation system, observing how using
1938 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
1939 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
1940 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
1941 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
1942 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
1943 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
1944 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
1945 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
1946 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
1947 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
1948 up the process make perfect sense.
1949
1950 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
1951 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
1952 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
1953 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
1954 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
1955 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
1956 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
1957 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
1958 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
1959 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
1960
1961 <blockquote><pre>
1962 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
1963 </pre></blockquote>
1964
1965 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
1966 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
1967 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
1968 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
1969 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
1970 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
1971 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
1972 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
1973 tested its impact.</p>
1974
1975
1976       </div>
1977       <div class="tags">
1978
1979
1980         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1981
1982
1983       </div>
1984     </div>
1985     <div class="padding"></div>
1986
1987     <div class="entry">
1988       <div class="title">
1989         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</a>
1990       </div>
1991       <div class="date">
1992         24th November 2016
1993       </div>
1994       <div class="body">
1995         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
1996 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
1997 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
1998 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
1999 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
2000 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
2001 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
2002 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
2003 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
2004 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
2005 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
2006 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
2007 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
2008 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
2009 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
2010 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
2011 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
2012 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
2013 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
2014
2015 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
2016 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
2017 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
2018 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
2019 api.apertium.org.  Se
2020 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
2021 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
2022 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
2023 nynorsk.</p>
2024
2025 <hr/>
2026
2027 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
2028 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
2029 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
2030 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
2031 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
2032 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
2033 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
2034 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
2035 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
2036 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
2037 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
2038 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
2039 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
2040 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
2041 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
2042 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
2043 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
2044 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
2045 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
2046
2047 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
2048 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
2049 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
2050 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
2051 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
2052 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
2053 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
2054 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
2055 nynorsk.</p>
2056
2057       </div>
2058       <div class="tags">
2059
2060
2061         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
2062
2063
2064       </div>
2065     </div>
2066     <div class="padding"></div>
2067
2068     <div class="entry">
2069       <div class="title">
2070         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
2071       </div>
2072       <div class="date">
2073         13th November 2016
2074       </div>
2075       <div class="body">
2076         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
2077 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
2078 multi-threaded program, finally
2079 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
2080 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
2081 months since
2082 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
2083 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
2084 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
2085 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
2086 JavaScript libraries.</p>
2087
2088 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
2089
2090 <p><blockquote>
2091 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
2092 </blockquote></p>
2093
2094 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
2095 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
2096 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
2097 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
2098 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
2099
2100 <p><blockquote>
2101 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
2102 </blockquote></p>
2103
2104 <p>See the project home page and the
2105 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
2106 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
2107 working.</p>
2108
2109       </div>
2110       <div class="tags">
2111
2112
2113         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2114
2115
2116       </div>
2117     </div>
2118     <div class="padding"></div>
2119
2120     <div class="entry">
2121       <div class="title">
2122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
2123       </div>
2124       <div class="date">
2125          4th November 2016
2126       </div>
2127       <div class="body">
2128         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
2129 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
2130 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
2131 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
2132 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
2133 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
2134 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
2135 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
2136 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
2137 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
2138 and had
2139 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
2140 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
2141 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
2142 loved ones. :)</p>
2143
2144 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
2145 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
2146 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
2147 building
2148 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
2149 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
2150 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
2151 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
2152 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
2153 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
2154 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
2155 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
2156
2157 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
2158
2159 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
2160 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
2161 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
2162 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
2163 the battery status run low:</p>
2164
2165 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
2166    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
2167 </video></p>
2168
2169 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
2170 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
2171
2172 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
2173 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
2174 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
2175 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
2176 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
2177 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
2178 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
2179 should.</p>
2180
2181       </div>
2182       <div class="tags">
2183
2184
2185         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2186
2187
2188       </div>
2189     </div>
2190     <div class="padding"></div>
2191
2192     <div class="entry">
2193       <div class="title">
2194         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
2195       </div>
2196       <div class="date">
2197         10th October 2016
2198       </div>
2199       <div class="body">
2200         <p>In July
2201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
2202 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
2203 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
2204 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
2205
2206 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
2207 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
2208 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
2209 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
2210 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
2211 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
2212 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
2213 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
2214 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
2215 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
2216 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
2217 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
2218 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
2219 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
2220 time.</p>
2221
2222 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
2223 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
2224 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
2225 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
2226 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
2227 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
2228 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
2229
2230 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
2231 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
2232 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
2233 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
2234 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
2235 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
2236 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
2237 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
2238 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
2239 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
2240
2241 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
2242
2243 <ol>
2244
2245 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
2246 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
2247 know, so you need to install it.
2248
2249 <pre>
2250 apt install git tor chromium
2251 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
2252 </pre></li>
2253
2254 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
2255 block below.</li>
2256
2257 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
2258 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
2259
2260 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
2261 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
2262 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
2263 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
2264 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
2265
2266 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
2267 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
2268 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
2269 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
2270 a associated contact database.</li>
2271
2272 </ol>
2273
2274 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
2275 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
2276 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
2277 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
2278 example
2279 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
2280 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
2281 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
2282 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
2283 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
2284 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
2285 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
2286 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
2287 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
2288 working on Debian Stable.</p>
2289
2290 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
2291 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
2292 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
2293
2294 <pre>
2295 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
2296 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
2297 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
2298 --- a/js/background.js
2299 +++ b/js/background.js
2300 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
2301          });
2302      });
2303
2304 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
2305 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
2306      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
2307 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
2308 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
2309      var messageReceiver;
2310      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
2311          if (messageReceiver) {
2312 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
2313 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
2314 --- a/js/expire.js
2315 +++ b/js/expire.js
2316 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
2317  ;(function() {
2318      'use strict';
2319 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
2320 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
2321
2322      window.extension = window.extension || {};
2323
2324 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
2325 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
2326 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
2327 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
2328 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
2329              return {
2330                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
2331                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
2332 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
2333 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
2334 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
2335              };
2336          },
2337          clearQR: function() {
2338 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
2339 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
2340 --- a/options.html
2341 +++ b/options.html
2342 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
2343          &lt;div class='nav'>
2344            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
2345            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
2346 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
2347 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
2348 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
2349 +
2350 +         &lt;/div>
2351            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
2352            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
2353            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
2354 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
2355 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
2356 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
2357 +#!/bin/sh
2358 +set -e
2359 +cd $(dirname $0)
2360 +mkdir -p userdata
2361 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
2362 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
2363 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
2364 +fi
2365 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
2366 +exec chromium \
2367 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
2368 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
2369 EOF
2370 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
2371 </pre>
2372
2373 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2374 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2375 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2376
2377       </div>
2378       <div class="tags">
2379
2380
2381         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2382
2383
2384       </div>
2385     </div>
2386     <div class="padding"></div>
2387
2388     <div class="entry">
2389       <div class="title">
2390         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
2391       </div>
2392       <div class="date">
2393          7th October 2016
2394       </div>
2395       <div class="body">
2396         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2397 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
2398 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
2399 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
2400 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
2401 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
2402 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
2403 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
2404 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
2405 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
2406 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
2407 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
2408 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
2409
2410 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
2411 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
2412 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
2413 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
2414 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
2415 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
2416
2417 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
2418 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
2419 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
2420 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
2421 identifiers.</p>
2422
2423 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
2424 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
2425 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
2426 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
2427 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
2428 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
2429 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
2430 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
2431 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
2432 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
2433 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
2434 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
2435 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
2436 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
2437
2438 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
2439 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
2440 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
2441 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
2442 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
2443 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
2444 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
2445
2446 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
2447 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
2448 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
2449 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
2450 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
2451 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
2452 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
2453 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
2454 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
2455 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
2456 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
2457 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
2458 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
2459 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
2460 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
2461 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
2462 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
2463
2464 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
2465 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
2466 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
2467 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
2468 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
2469 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
2470 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
2471
2472 <p><pre>
2473 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
2474     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
2475 </pre></p>
2476
2477 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
2478 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
2479 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
2480 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
2481 to detect this?</p>
2482
2483 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
2484 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
2485 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
2486 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
2487 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
2488 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
2489 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
2490 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
2491 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
2492 directly if no such class exist.</p>
2493
2494 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2495 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2496 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2497
2498 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
2499 please join us on our IRC channel
2500 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
2501 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
2502 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
2503 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
2504
2505 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2506 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2507 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2508
2509       </div>
2510       <div class="tags">
2511
2512
2513         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>.
2514
2515
2516       </div>
2517     </div>
2518     <div class="padding"></div>
2519
2520     <div class="entry">
2521       <div class="title">
2522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
2523       </div>
2524       <div class="date">
2525         30th August 2016
2526       </div>
2527       <div class="body">
2528         <p>In April we
2529 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
2530 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
2531 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
2532 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
2533 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
2534 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
2535 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
2536 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
2537 contributing using
2538 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2539 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
2540 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2541 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
2542 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2543 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
2544 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
2545
2546 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
2547 electronic form.</p>
2548
2549       </div>
2550       <div class="tags">
2551
2552
2553         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2554
2555
2556       </div>
2557     </div>
2558     <div class="padding"></div>
2559
2560     <div class="entry">
2561       <div class="title">
2562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
2563       </div>
2564       <div class="date">
2565         11th August 2016
2566       </div>
2567       <div class="body">
2568         <p>This summer, I read a great article
2569 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
2570 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
2571 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
2572 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
2573 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
2574 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
2575 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
2576 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
2577 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
2578 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
2579 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
2580 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
2581
2582 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
2583 get the system into Debian.  I
2584 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
2585 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
2586 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
2587 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
2588 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
2589 profiling information included in the source package.
2590 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
2591
2592 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
2593 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
2594
2595 <p><blockquote><pre>
2596 coz run --- program-to-run
2597 </pre></blockquote></p>
2598
2599 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
2600 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
2601 most, use a web browser and either point it to
2602 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
2603 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
2604 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
2605 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
2606 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
2607 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
2608 targeted experiments.</p>
2609
2610 <p>A video published by ACM
2611 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
2612 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
2613 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
2614 titled
2615 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
2616 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
2617
2618 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
2619 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
2620 because it uses a
2621 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
2622 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
2623 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
2624 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
2625
2626 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
2627 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
2628 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
2629 C++ libraries.</p>
2630
2631       </div>
2632       <div class="tags">
2633
2634
2635         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2636
2637
2638       </div>
2639     </div>
2640     <div class="padding"></div>
2641
2642     <div class="entry">
2643       <div class="title">
2644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
2645       </div>
2646       <div class="date">
2647          7th July 2016
2648       </div>
2649       <div class="body">
2650         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
2651 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
2652 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
2653 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
2654 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
2655 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
2656 microphone The initial idea had been to just
2657 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
2658 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
2659 until a few days ago.</p>
2660
2661 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
2662 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
2663 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
2664 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
2665 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
2666 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
2667 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
2668
2669 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
2670 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
2671 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
2672 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
2673 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
2674 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
2675 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
2676 him.</p>
2677
2678 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
2679 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
2680 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
2681 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
2682 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
2683 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
2684 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
2685 devices it would work for.</p>
2686
2687 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
2688 followed some instructions
2689 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
2690 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
2691 machine with Debian testing:</p>
2692
2693 <p><pre>
2694 adb reboot-bootloader
2695 fastboot oem rebootRUU
2696 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
2697 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
2698 fastboot reboot
2699 </pre></p>
2700
2701 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
2702 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
2703 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
2704 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
2705 too.</p>
2706
2707 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
2708 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
2709 like this:</p>
2710
2711 <p><pre>
2712 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
2713 </pre>
2714
2715 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
2716 this:</p>
2717
2718 <p><pre>
2719 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
2720 </pre></p>
2721
2722 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
2723 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
2724 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
2725 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
2726 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
2727
2728       </div>
2729       <div class="tags">
2730
2731
2732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2733
2734
2735       </div>
2736     </div>
2737     <div class="padding"></div>
2738
2739     <div class="entry">
2740       <div class="title">
2741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
2742       </div>
2743       <div class="date">
2744          3rd July 2016
2745       </div>
2746       <div class="body">
2747         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
2748 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
2749 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
2750 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
2751 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
2752 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
2753 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
2754 Github source, compared it to the source in
2755 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
2756 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
2757 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
2758 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
2759 the recipe how I did it.</p>
2760
2761 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
2762
2763 <pre>
2764 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
2765 </pre>
2766
2767 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
2768 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
2769
2770 <pre>
2771 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
2772 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
2773 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
2774 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
2775 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
2776          });
2777      });
2778
2779 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
2780 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
2781 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
2782 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
2783      var messageReceiver;
2784      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
2785          if (messageReceiver) {
2786 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
2787 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
2788 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
2789 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
2790  ;(function() {
2791      'use strict';
2792 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
2793 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
2794
2795      window.extension = window.extension || {};
2796
2797 EOF
2798 </pre>
2799
2800 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
2801 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
2802 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
2803 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
2804
2805 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
2806 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
2807
2808 <pre>
2809 #!/bin/sh
2810 cd $(dirname $0)
2811 mkdir -p userdata
2812 exec chromium \
2813   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
2814   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
2815 </pre>
2816
2817 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
2818 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
2819 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
2820 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
2821 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
2822
2823 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
2824 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
2825 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
2826 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
2827 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
2828 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
2829 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
2830 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
2831 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
2832 Signal from my laptop.
2833
2834 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
2835 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
2836 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
2837 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
2838 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
2839 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
2840 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
2841 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
2842 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
2843 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
2844 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
2845 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
2846
2847 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
2848 on this topic in
2849 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
2850 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
2851 phone</a>.</p>
2852
2853       </div>
2854       <div class="tags">
2855
2856
2857         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2858
2859
2860       </div>
2861     </div>
2862     <div class="padding"></div>
2863
2864     <div class="entry">
2865       <div class="title">
2866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
2867       </div>
2868       <div class="date">
2869          6th June 2016
2870       </div>
2871       <div class="body">
2872         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
2873 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
2874 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
2875 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
2876 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
2877 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
2878 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
2879 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
2880 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
2881
2882 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
2883 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
2884 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
2885 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
2886 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
2887 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
2888 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
2889
2890 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
2891 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
2892 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
2893 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
2894 toten and parole.</p>
2895
2896 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
2897 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
2898 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
2899 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
2900 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
2901 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
2902 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
2903 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
2904 formats.</p>
2905
2906       </div>
2907       <div class="tags">
2908
2909
2910         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2911
2912
2913       </div>
2914     </div>
2915     <div class="padding"></div>
2916
2917     <div class="entry">
2918       <div class="title">
2919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
2920       </div>
2921       <div class="date">
2922          5th June 2016
2923       </div>
2924       <div class="body">
2925         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
2926 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
2927 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
2928 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
2929 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
2930 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
2931 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
2932 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
2933 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
2934 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
2935 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
2936 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
2937 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
2938 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
2939 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
2940 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
2941 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
2942 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
2943 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
2944 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
2945
2946 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
2947 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
2948 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
2949 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
2950 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
2951 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
2952 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
2953 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
2954 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
2955 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
2956 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
2957 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
2958 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
2959 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
2960
2961 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
2962 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
2963 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
2964 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
2965 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
2966 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
2967 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
2968 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
2969
2970 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
2971 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
2972 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
2973 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
2974 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
2975 information is collected from
2976 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
2977 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
2978 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
2979 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
2980 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
2981 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
2982 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
2983 type (preferably
2984 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
2985 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
2986 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
2987 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
2988
2989 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
2990 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
2991 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
2992
2993 <p><blockquote><pre>
2994 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
2995 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
2996   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
2997     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
2998     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
2999     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
3000   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
3001 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
3002 </pre></blockquote></p>
3003
3004 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
3005 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
3006 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
3007 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
3008
3009 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
3010 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
3011 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
3012
3013 <p><blockquote><pre>
3014 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
3015 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
3016 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
3017 %
3018 </pre></blockquote></p>
3019
3020 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
3021 MimeType= line.</p>
3022
3023 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
3024 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
3025 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
3026 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
3027 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
3028 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
3029 fixed. :)</p>
3030
3031       </div>
3032       <div class="tags">
3033
3034
3035         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3036
3037
3038       </div>
3039     </div>
3040     <div class="padding"></div>
3041
3042     <div class="entry">
3043       <div class="title">
3044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
3045       </div>
3046       <div class="date">
3047         25th May 2016
3048       </div>
3049       <div class="body">
3050         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
3051 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
3052 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
3053 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
3054 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
3055 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
3056 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
3057 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
3058 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
3059 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
3060 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
3061 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
3062
3063 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
3064 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
3065 is going away and is generally being replaced by
3066 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
3067 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
3068 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
3069 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
3070 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
3071 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
3072 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
3073 and see if it is recognised.</p>
3074
3075 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
3076 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
3077 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
3078
3079 <p><blockquote><pre>
3080 % isenkram-lookup
3081 bluez
3082 cheese
3083 fprintd
3084 fprintd-demo
3085 gkrellm-thinkbat
3086 hdapsd
3087 libpam-fprintd
3088 pidgin-blinklight
3089 thinkfan
3090 tleds
3091 tp-smapi-dkms
3092 tp-smapi-source
3093 tpb
3094 %p
3095 </pre></blockquote></p>
3096
3097 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
3098 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
3099 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
3100 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
3101 See
3102 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
3103 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
3104
3105       </div>
3106       <div class="tags">
3107
3108
3109         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3110
3111
3112       </div>
3113     </div>
3114     <div class="padding"></div>
3115
3116     <div class="entry">
3117       <div class="title">
3118         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
3119       </div>
3120       <div class="date">
3121         23rd May 2016
3122       </div>
3123       <div class="body">
3124         <p>Yesterday I updated the
3125 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
3126 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
3127 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
3128 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
3129 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
3130 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
3131 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
3132 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
3133 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
3134 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
3135
3136 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
3137 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
3138 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
3139 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
3140 capacity.</p>
3141
3142 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
3143
3144 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
3145 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
3146 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
3147 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
3148
3149 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
3150
3151 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
3152 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
3153 shrinking. :(</p>
3154
3155 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
3156 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
3157 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
3158 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
3159 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
3160 machine.</p>
3161
3162 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
3163 check out the
3164 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
3165 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
3166 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
3167 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3168 Patches are very welcome.</p>
3169
3170 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3171 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3172 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3173
3174       </div>
3175       <div class="tags">
3176
3177
3178         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3179
3180
3181       </div>
3182     </div>
3183     <div class="padding"></div>
3184
3185     <div class="entry">
3186       <div class="title">
3187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
3188       </div>
3189       <div class="date">
3190         12th May 2016
3191       </div>
3192       <div class="body">
3193         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
3194 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
3195 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
3196 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
3197 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
3198 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3199 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
3200 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
3201 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
3202 great if you could help out with
3203 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
3204 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
3205
3206       </div>
3207       <div class="tags">
3208
3209
3210         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3211
3212
3213       </div>
3214     </div>
3215     <div class="padding"></div>
3216
3217     <div class="entry">
3218       <div class="title">
3219         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
3220       </div>
3221       <div class="date">
3222          8th May 2016
3223       </div>
3224       <div class="body">
3225         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
3226 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
3227
3228 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
3229 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
3230 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
3231 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
3232 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
3233 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
3234 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
3235 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
3236 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
3237 players.</p>
3238
3239 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
3240 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
3241 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
3242 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
3243 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
3244 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
3245 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
3246 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
3247 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
3248 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
3249 support most file formats.</p>
3250
3251 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
3252 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
3253 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
3254 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
3255 listed first in the table.</p>
3256
3257 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
3258 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
3259 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
3260 support?</p>
3261
3262       </div>
3263       <div class="tags">
3264
3265
3266         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3267
3268
3269       </div>
3270     </div>
3271     <div class="padding"></div>
3272
3273     <div class="entry">
3274       <div class="title">
3275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
3276       </div>
3277       <div class="date">
3278          4th May 2016
3279       </div>
3280       <div class="body">
3281         A friend of mine made me aware of
3282 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
3283 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
3284 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
3285
3286 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
3287 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
3288 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
3289 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
3290 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
3291 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
3292 production started.</p>
3293
3294 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
3295 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
3296 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
3297
3298       </div>
3299       <div class="tags">
3300
3301
3302         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3303
3304
3305       </div>
3306     </div>
3307     <div class="padding"></div>
3308
3309     <div class="entry">
3310       <div class="title">
3311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
3312       </div>
3313       <div class="date">
3314         10th April 2016
3315       </div>
3316       <div class="body">
3317         <p>During this weekends
3318 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
3319 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
3320 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
3321 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
3322 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
3323 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
3324 contributing using
3325 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
3326 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
3327 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
3328 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
3329 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
3330 contributors</a>.</p>
3331
3332 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
3333 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
3334 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
3335 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
3336 available for many more languages.</p>
3337
3338       </div>
3339       <div class="tags">
3340
3341
3342         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3343
3344
3345       </div>
3346     </div>
3347     <div class="padding"></div>
3348
3349     <div class="entry">
3350       <div class="title">
3351         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
3352       </div>
3353       <div class="date">
3354          7th April 2016
3355       </div>
3356       <div class="body">
3357         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
3358 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
3359 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
3360 But I might be wrong.</p>
3361
3362 <p>According to
3363 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
3364 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
3365 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
3366 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
3367 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
3368 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
3369 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
3370 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
3371 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
3372 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
3373
3374 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
3375 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
3376 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
3377 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
3378 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
3379 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
3380 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
3381 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3382 team status page</a>, and
3383 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
3384 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
3385
3386 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
3387 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
3388 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
3389 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
3390 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
3391 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
3392 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
3393 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
3394 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
3395 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
3396 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
3397 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
3398
3399       </div>
3400       <div class="tags">
3401
3402
3403         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3404
3405
3406       </div>
3407     </div>
3408     <div class="padding"></div>
3409
3410     <div class="entry">
3411       <div class="title">
3412         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
3413       </div>
3414       <div class="date">
3415         23rd March 2016
3416       </div>
3417       <div class="body">
3418         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
3419 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
3420 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
3421 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
3422 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
3423 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
3424 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
3425 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
3426
3427 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
3428 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
3429 and lifetime prediction by running:
3430
3431 <p><pre>
3432 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
3433 </pre></p>
3434
3435 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
3436
3437 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
3438 entry yet):</p>
3439
3440 <p><pre>
3441 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
3442 </pre></p>
3443
3444 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
3445 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
3446 few years of data.</p>
3447
3448 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
3449 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
3450 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
3451 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
3452 know.  The issue is reported as
3453 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
3454 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
3455 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
3456 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
3457 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
3458
3459 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
3460 check out the
3461 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
3462 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
3463 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
3464 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3465 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
3466
3467       </div>
3468       <div class="tags">
3469
3470
3471         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3472
3473
3474       </div>
3475     </div>
3476     <div class="padding"></div>
3477
3478     <div class="entry">
3479       <div class="title">
3480         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
3481       </div>
3482       <div class="date">
3483         15th March 2016
3484       </div>
3485       <div class="body">
3486         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
3487 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
3488 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
3489 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
3490 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
3491 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
3492 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
3493 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
3494 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
3495 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
3496 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
3497
3498 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
3499 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
3500 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
3501 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
3502 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
3503 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
3504 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
3505 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
3506 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
3507 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
3508 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
3509
3510 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
3511
3512 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
3513 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
3514 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
3515 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
3516 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
3517 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
3518
3519 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
3520 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
3521 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
3522 and graphing.</p>
3523
3524 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
3525 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
3526 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
3527 on
3528 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3529 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
3530
3531       </div>
3532       <div class="tags">
3533
3534
3535         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3536
3537
3538       </div>
3539     </div>
3540     <div class="padding"></div>
3541
3542     <div class="entry">
3543       <div class="title">
3544         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
3545       </div>
3546       <div class="date">
3547         19th February 2016
3548       </div>
3549       <div class="body">
3550         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
3551 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
3552 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
3553 the code in the package in question, preferably in
3554 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
3555 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
3556
3557 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
3558 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
3559 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
3560 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
3561 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
3562 out what was wrong with
3563 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
3564 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
3565 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
3566 semi-automatically.</p>
3567
3568 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
3569 file based on the code in the source package,
3570 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
3571 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
3572 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
3573 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
3574 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
3575 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
3576 option in
3577 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
3578 blog posts from 2014</a>.
3579
3580 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
3581
3582 <p><pre>
3583 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
3584 </pre></p>
3585
3586 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
3587 this might not be the best option.</p>
3588
3589 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
3590 this approach in
3591 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
3592 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
3593 dpkg-copyright' option:
3594
3595 <p><pre>
3596 cme update dpkg-copyright
3597 </pre></p>
3598
3599 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
3600 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
3601
3602 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
3603 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
3604 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
3605 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
3606 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
3607 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
3608 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
3609 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
3610 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
3611 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
3612
3613 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
3614 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
3615 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
3616 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
3617
3618 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
3619 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
3620 planet.debian.org.</p>
3621
3622 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3623 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3624 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3625
3626 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
3627 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
3628
3629 <p><pre>
3630 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
3631   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
3632 </pre></p>
3633
3634 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
3635 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
3636 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
3637 with my packages in the future.</p>
3638
3639 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
3640 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
3641 command line.</p>
3642
3643       </div>
3644       <div class="tags">
3645
3646
3647         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3648
3649
3650       </div>
3651     </div>
3652     <div class="padding"></div>
3653
3654     <div class="entry">
3655       <div class="title">
3656         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
3657       </div>
3658       <div class="date">
3659          4th February 2016
3660       </div>
3661       <div class="body">
3662         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
3663 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
3664 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
3665 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
3666 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
3667 about. :)</p>
3668
3669 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
3670 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
3671 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
3672 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
3673 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
3674 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
3675
3676 <blockquote><pre>
3677 % apt install appstream
3678 [...]
3679 % apt update
3680 [...]
3681 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
3682   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
3683 firmware-qlogic
3684 %
3685 </pre></blockquote>
3686
3687 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
3688 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
3689 a way appstream can use.</p>
3690
3691 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
3692 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
3693 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
3694 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
3695 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
3696 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
3697
3698 <blockquote><pre>
3699 % apt install appstream
3700 [...]
3701 % apt update
3702 [...]
3703 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
3704   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
3705 bkchem
3706 phototonic
3707 inkscape
3708 shutter
3709 tetzle
3710 geeqie
3711 xia
3712 pinta
3713 gthumb
3714 karbon
3715 comix
3716 mirage
3717 viewnior
3718 postr
3719 ristretto
3720 kolourpaint4
3721 eog
3722 eom
3723 gimagereader
3724 midori
3725 %
3726 </pre></blockquote>
3727
3728 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
3729 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
3730
3731       </div>
3732       <div class="tags">
3733
3734
3735         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3736
3737
3738       </div>
3739     </div>
3740     <div class="padding"></div>
3741
3742     <div class="entry">
3743       <div class="title">
3744         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
3745       </div>
3746       <div class="date">
3747         24th January 2016
3748       </div>
3749       <div class="body">
3750         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
3751 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
3752 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
3753 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
3754 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
3755 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
3756 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
3757 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
3758 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
3759 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
3760 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
3761 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
3762 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
3763 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
3764 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
3765 entities.</p>
3766
3767 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
3768
3769 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
3770 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
3771 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
3772 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
3773 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
3774 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
3775 tool to do so is called
3776 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
3777 discovered it when I read
3778 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
3779 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
3780 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
3781 The python program was in Debian, but
3782 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
3783 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
3784 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
3785 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
3786 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
3787 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
3788 are now included
3789 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
3790
3791 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
3792 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
3793 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
3794 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
3795 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
3796 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
3797 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
3798 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
3799 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
3800 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
3801 about yourself with the services.</p>
3802
3803 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
3804 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
3805 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
3806 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
3807 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
3808 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
3809 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
3810 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
3811 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
3812 things.  A similar technique have been
3813 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
3814 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
3815 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
3816 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
3817 public.</p>
3818
3819 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
3820 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
3821 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
3822 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
3823
3824 <p>(I have uploaded
3825 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
3826 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
3827 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
3828
3829       </div>
3830       <div class="tags">
3831
3832
3833         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3834
3835
3836       </div>
3837     </div>
3838     <div class="padding"></div>
3839
3840     <div class="entry">
3841       <div class="title">
3842         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
3843       </div>
3844       <div class="date">
3845         15th January 2016
3846       </div>
3847       <div class="body">
3848         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
3849 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
3850 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
3851 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
3852 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
3853 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
3854 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
3855 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
3856 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
3857 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
3858 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
3859 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
3860 was not the first to propose this, as the
3861 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
3862 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
3863 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
3864 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
3865
3866 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
3867 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
3868 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
3869 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
3870 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
3871
3872 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
3873 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
3874 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
3875 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
3876 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
3877 done in /etc/.</p>
3878
3879 <blockquote><pre>
3880 apt install apt-transport-tor
3881 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
3882 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
3883 </pre></blockquote>
3884
3885 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
3886 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
3887 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
3888 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
3889
3890 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
3891 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
3892 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
3893 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
3894 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
3895 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
3896
3897 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
3898 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
3899 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
3900 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
3901 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
3902
3903 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
3904 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
3905 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
3906 system.</p>
3907
3908       </div>
3909       <div class="tags">
3910
3911
3912         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3913
3914
3915       </div>
3916     </div>
3917     <div class="padding"></div>
3918
3919     <div class="entry">
3920       <div class="title">
3921         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
3922       </div>
3923       <div class="date">
3924         23rd December 2015
3925       </div>
3926       <div class="body">
3927         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
3928 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
3929 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
3930 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
3931 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
3932 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
3933
3934 <p>A few days I came across
3935 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
3936 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
3937 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
3938 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
3939 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
3940 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
3941 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
3942 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
3943 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
3944 discovered the developer
3945 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
3946 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
3947 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
3948 archive.</p>
3949
3950 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
3951 it into Debian, where it currently
3952 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
3953 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
3954
3955 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
3956 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
3957 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
3958 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
3959 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
3960 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
3961 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
3962 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
3963 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
3964 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
3965 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
3966 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
3967
3968 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
3969 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
3970 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
3971 package show up in unstable.</p>
3972
3973       </div>
3974       <div class="tags">
3975
3976
3977         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3978
3979
3980       </div>
3981     </div>
3982     <div class="padding"></div>
3983
3984     <div class="entry">
3985       <div class="title">
3986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
3987       </div>
3988       <div class="date">
3989         20th December 2015
3990       </div>
3991       <div class="body">
3992         <p>Around three years ago, I created
3993 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
3994 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
3995 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
3996 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
3997 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
3998 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
3999 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
4000 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
4001 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
4002 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
4003 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
4004 with.</p>
4005
4006 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
4007 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
4008 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
4009 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
4010 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
4011 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
4012 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
4013 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
4014 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
4015 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
4016 Debian version of appstream.</p>
4017
4018 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
4019 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
4020 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
4021 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
4022 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
4023 how do add the required
4024 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
4025 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
4026 this content:</p>
4027
4028 <blockquote><pre>
4029 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
4030 &lt;component&gt;
4031   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
4032   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
4033   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
4034   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
4035   &lt;description&gt;
4036     &lt;p&gt;
4037       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
4038       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
4039       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
4040       launcher.
4041     &lt;/p&gt;
4042   &lt;/description&gt;
4043   &lt;provides&gt;
4044     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
4045   &lt;/provides&gt;
4046 &lt;/component&gt;
4047 </pre></blockquote>
4048
4049 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
4050 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
4051 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
4052 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
4053 0202.</p>
4054
4055 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
4056 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
4057 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
4058 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
4059 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
4060 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
4061 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
4062 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
4063
4064 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
4065 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
4066 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
4067 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
4068 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
4069
4070 <blockquote><pre>
4071 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
4072 </pre></blockquote>
4073
4074 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
4075 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
4076 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
4077 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
4078 question.</p>
4079
4080 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
4081 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
4082
4083 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
4084 try running this command on the command line:</p>
4085
4086 <blockquote><pre>
4087 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
4088 </pre></blockquote>
4089
4090 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
4091 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
4092 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
4093
4094       </div>
4095       <div class="tags">
4096
4097
4098         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4099
4100
4101       </div>
4102     </div>
4103     <div class="padding"></div>
4104
4105     <div class="entry">
4106       <div class="title">
4107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
4108       </div>
4109       <div class="date">
4110         30th November 2015
4111       </div>
4112       <div class="body">
4113         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
4114 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
4115 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
4116 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
4117 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
4118
4119 <blockquote>
4120
4121 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
4122
4123 <blockquote>
4124 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
4125
4126 The first step is to choose a
4127 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
4128 code.<br/>
4129
4130 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
4131 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
4132
4133 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
4134 work<br/>
4135
4136 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
4137 </blockquote>
4138
4139 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
4140 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
4141 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
4142 0x57</a></small></p>
4143
4144 <p>As the Debian Website
4145 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
4146 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
4147 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
4148 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
4149 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
4150 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
4151 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
4152 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
4153 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
4154 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
4155 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
4156 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
4157 Freedom">FaiF</a>
4158 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
4159 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
4160 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
4161 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
4162 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
4163 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
4164 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
4165 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
4166 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
4167 In March the SFC supported a
4168 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
4169 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
4170 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
4171 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
4172 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
4173 conferences
4174 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
4175 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
4176 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
4177 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
4178 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
4179 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
4180 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
4181 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
4182 Software.</p>
4183
4184 <p>If you support Free Software,
4185 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
4186 what the SFC do, agree with their
4187 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
4188 principles</a>, are happy about their
4189 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
4190 work on a project that is an SFC
4191 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
4192 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
4193 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
4194 Allan Webber</a>,
4195 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
4196 Smith</a>,
4197 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
4198 Bacon</a>, myself and
4199 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
4200 becoming a
4201 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
4202 next week your donation will be
4203 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
4204 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
4205 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
4206 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
4207 social media accounts.</p>
4208
4209 </blockquote>
4210
4211 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
4212 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
4213 supporter too?</p>
4214
4215       </div>
4216       <div class="tags">
4217
4218
4219         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
4220
4221
4222       </div>
4223     </div>
4224     <div class="padding"></div>
4225
4226     <div class="entry">
4227       <div class="title">
4228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
4229       </div>
4230       <div class="date">
4231         17th November 2015
4232       </div>
4233       <div class="body">
4234         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
4235 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
4236 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
4237 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
4238 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
4239 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
4240 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
4241 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
4242 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
4243 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
4244
4245 <pre>
4246 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
4247       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
4248 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
4249 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
4250 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
4251 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
4252 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
4253 </pre>
4254
4255 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
4256 my old key.</p>
4257
4258 <p>If you signed my old key
4259 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
4260 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
4261 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
4262 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
4263
4264       </div>
4265       <div class="tags">
4266
4267
4268         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4269
4270
4271       </div>
4272     </div>
4273     <div class="padding"></div>
4274
4275     <div class="entry">
4276       <div class="title">
4277         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
4278       </div>
4279       <div class="date">
4280         24th September 2015
4281       </div>
4282       <div class="body">
4283         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
4284 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
4285 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
4286 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
4287 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
4288 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
4289 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
4290
4291 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
4292
4293 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
4294 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
4295 by someone else.  I found
4296 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
4297 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
4298 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
4299 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
4300 from him.  Via
4301 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
4302 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
4303 discovered
4304 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
4305 available in Debian.</p>
4306
4307 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
4308 battery stats ever since. Now my
4309 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
4310 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
4311 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
4312 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
4313
4314 <pre>
4315 #!/bin/sh
4316 # Inspired by
4317 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
4318 # See also
4319 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
4320 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
4321
4322 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
4323     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
4324
4325 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
4326     (
4327         printf "timestamp,"
4328         for f in $files; do
4329             printf "%s," $f
4330         done
4331         echo
4332     ) > "$logfile"
4333 fi
4334
4335 log_battery() {
4336     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
4337     # when several log processes run in parallel.
4338     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
4339         for f in $files; do \
4340             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
4341         done)
4342     echo "$msg"
4343 }
4344
4345 cd /sys/class/power_supply
4346
4347 for bat in BAT*; do
4348     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
4349 done
4350 </pre>
4351
4352 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
4353 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
4354 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
4355 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
4356 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
4357 The code for the Debian package
4358 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
4359 available on github</a>.</p>
4360
4361 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
4362
4363 <pre>
4364 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
4365 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
4366 [...]
4367 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
4368 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
4369 </pre>
4370
4371 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
4372 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
4373 battery.</p>
4374
4375 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
4376 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
4377 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
4378 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
4379 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
4380 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
4381 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
4382 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
4383 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
4384 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
4385 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
4386 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
4387 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
4388 Linux too.</p>
4389
4390 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
4391 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
4392 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
4393 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
4394 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
4395 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
4396 load).</p>
4397
4398 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
4399 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
4400 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
4401 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
4402 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
4403 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
4404 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
4405 those.</p>
4406
4407 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
4408 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
4409 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
4410 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
4411 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
4412 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
4413 specific.</p>
4414
4415       </div>
4416       <div class="tags">
4417
4418
4419         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4420
4421
4422       </div>
4423     </div>
4424     <div class="padding"></div>
4425
4426     <div class="entry">
4427       <div class="title">
4428         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
4429       </div>
4430       <div class="date">
4431          5th July 2015
4432       </div>
4433       <div class="body">
4434         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
4435 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
4436 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
4437 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
4438 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
4439 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
4440 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
4441 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
4442 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
4443 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
4444 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
4445
4446 <p>One tip I got was to use the
4447 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
4448 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
4449 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
4450 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
4451 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
4452 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
4453
4454 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
4455 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
4456 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
4457 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
4458 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
4459 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
4460 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
4461 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
4462 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
4463 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
4464 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
4465 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
4466 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
4467 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
4468 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
4469
4470 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
4471 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
4472 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
4473 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
4474
4475 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
4476 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
4477
4478 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
4479 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
4480 different
4481 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
4482 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
4483
4484       </div>
4485       <div class="tags">
4486
4487
4488         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4489
4490
4491       </div>
4492     </div>
4493     <div class="padding"></div>
4494
4495     <div class="entry">
4496       <div class="title">
4497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
4498       </div>
4499       <div class="date">
4500          3rd July 2015
4501       </div>
4502       <div class="body">
4503         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
4504 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
4505 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
4506 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
4507 flickering.</p>
4508
4509 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
4510 still as
4511 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
4512 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
4513 good help from
4514 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
4515 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
4516 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
4517 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
4518 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
4519 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
4520 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
4521 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
4522 deteriorated since X41.</p>
4523
4524 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
4525 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
4526 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
4527 have suggestions.</p>
4528
4529 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
4530 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
4531 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
4532
4533       </div>
4534       <div class="tags">
4535
4536
4537         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4538
4539
4540       </div>
4541     </div>
4542     <div class="padding"></div>
4543
4544     <div class="entry">
4545       <div class="title">
4546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
4547       </div>
4548       <div class="date">
4549         22nd November 2014
4550       </div>
4551       <div class="body">
4552         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
4553 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
4554 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
4555 courtesy of
4556 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
4557 Schubert</a> and
4558 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
4559 McVittie</a>.
4560
4561 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
4562 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
4563 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
4564 you upgrade:</p>
4565
4566 <p><blockquote><pre>
4567 Package: systemd-sysv
4568 Pin: release o=Debian
4569 Pin-Priority: -1
4570 </pre></blockquote><p>
4571
4572 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
4573 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
4574 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
4575 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
4576 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
4577
4578 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
4579 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
4580 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
4581 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
4582 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
4583 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
4584
4585 <p><blockquote><pre>
4586 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
4587 </pre></blockquote><p>
4588
4589 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
4590
4591 <p><blockquote><pre>
4592 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
4593 </pre></blockquote><p>
4594
4595 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
4596 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
4597
4598 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
4599 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
4600 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
4601 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
4602 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
4603 Jessie is released.</p>
4604
4605 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
4606 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
4607 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
4608 line.</p>
4609
4610       </div>
4611       <div class="tags">
4612
4613
4614         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4615
4616
4617       </div>
4618     </div>
4619     <div class="padding"></div>
4620
4621     <div class="entry">
4622       <div class="title">
4623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
4624       </div>
4625       <div class="date">
4626         10th November 2014
4627       </div>
4628       <div class="body">
4629         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
4630 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
4631 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
4632
4633 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
4634 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
4635 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
4636 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
4637 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
4638 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
4639 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
4640 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
4641 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
4642 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
4643 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
4644 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
4645 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
4646 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
4647 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
4648
4649 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
4650 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
4651 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
4652 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
4653 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
4654 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
4655 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
4656 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
4657 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
4658 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
4659 were fairly easy, and
4660 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
4661 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
4662 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
4663 useful approach.</p>
4664
4665 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
4666 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
4667 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
4668 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
4669 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
4670 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
4671 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
4672 this:</p>
4673
4674 <p><blockquote><pre>
4675 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
4676   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
4677 </pre></blockquote></p>
4678
4679 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
4680 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
4681
4682 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
4683 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
4684 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
4685 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
4686 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
4687 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
4688 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
4689 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
4690 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
4691 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
4692 system.</p>
4693
4694 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
4695 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
4696 SMTorP. :)</p>
4697
4698       </div>
4699       <div class="tags">
4700
4701
4702         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4703
4704
4705       </div>
4706     </div>
4707     <div class="padding"></div>
4708
4709     <div class="entry">
4710       <div class="title">
4711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
4712       </div>
4713       <div class="date">
4714         22nd October 2014
4715       </div>
4716       <div class="body">
4717         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
4718 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
4719 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
4720 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
4721 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
4722 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
4723 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
4724 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
4725 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
4726 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
4727 lists I recently took over:</p>
4728
4729 <p><blockquote><pre>
4730 % time listadmin xiph
4731 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
4732 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
4733
4734 real    0m1.709s
4735 user    0m0.232s
4736 sys     0m0.012s
4737 %
4738 </pre></blockquote></p>
4739
4740 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
4741 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
4742 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
4743 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
4744 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
4745 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
4746 program.</p>
4747
4748 <p>If you install
4749 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
4750 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
4751 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
4752
4753 <p><blockquote><pre>
4754 username username@example.org
4755 spamlevel 23
4756 default discard
4757 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
4758
4759 password secret
4760 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
4761 mailman-list@lists.example.com
4762
4763 password hidden
4764 other-list@otherserver.example.org
4765 </pre></blockquote></p>
4766
4767 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
4768 learn the details.</p>
4769
4770 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
4771 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
4772 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
4773 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
4774
4775 <p><blockquote><pre>
4776 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
4777 </pre></blockquote></p>
4778
4779 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
4780 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
4781 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
4782 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
4783 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
4784 email.</p>
4785
4786 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
4787 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
4788 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
4789 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
4790 software.</p>
4791
4792 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4793 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4794 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4795
4796 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
4797 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
4798 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
4799 sure why.</p>
4800
4801       </div>
4802       <div class="tags">
4803
4804
4805         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4806
4807
4808       </div>
4809     </div>
4810     <div class="padding"></div>
4811
4812     <div class="entry">
4813       <div class="title">
4814         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
4815       </div>
4816       <div class="date">
4817         17th October 2014
4818       </div>
4819       <div class="body">
4820         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
4821 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
4822 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
4823 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
4824 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
4825 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
4826 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
4827
4828 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
4829 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
4830 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
4831 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
4832 of this story.)</p>
4833
4834 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
4835 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
4836 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
4837 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
4838 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
4839 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
4840 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
4841 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
4842 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
4843 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
4844
4845 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
4846 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
4847 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
4848 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
4849
4850 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
4851 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
4852
4853 <p><blockquote><pre>
4854 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
4855 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
4856 </pre></blockquote></p>
4857
4858 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
4859 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
4860 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
4861 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
4862 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
4863 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
4864 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
4865 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
4866
4867 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
4868 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
4869
4870 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
4871 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
4872 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
4873 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
4874 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
4875
4876 <p><blockquote><pre>
4877 Task: isenkram-packages
4878 Section: hardware
4879 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4880  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
4881  proposed.
4882 Test-new-install: show show
4883 Relevance: 8
4884 Packages: for-current-hardware
4885
4886 Task: isenkram-firmware
4887 Section: hardware
4888 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4889  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
4890  packages are proposed.
4891 Test-new-install: mark show
4892 Relevance: 8
4893 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
4894 </pre></blockquote></p>
4895
4896 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
4897 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
4898 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
4899 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
4900 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
4901
4902 <p><blockquote><pre>
4903 #!/bin/sh
4904 #
4905 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
4906 export PATH
4907 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4908 </pre></blockquote></p>
4909
4910 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
4911 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
4912
4913 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
4914 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
4915 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
4916 install.</p>
4917
4918 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
4919 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
4920 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
4921
4922       </div>
4923       <div class="tags">
4924
4925
4926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
4927
4928
4929       </div>
4930     </div>
4931     <div class="padding"></div>
4932
4933     <div class="entry">
4934       <div class="title">
4935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
4936       </div>
4937       <div class="date">
4938          4th October 2014
4939       </div>
4940       <div class="body">
4941         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
4942 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
4943 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
4944 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
4945
4946 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
4947
4948 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
4949 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
4950 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
4951
4952       </div>
4953       <div class="tags">
4954
4955
4956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4957
4958
4959       </div>
4960     </div>
4961     <div class="padding"></div>
4962
4963     <div class="entry">
4964       <div class="title">
4965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
4966       </div>
4967       <div class="date">
4968          4th October 2014
4969       </div>
4970       <div class="body">
4971         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
4972 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
4973 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
4974 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
4975 Dibb.</p>
4976
4977 <p>I just wrapped up
4978 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
4979 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
4980 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
4981 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
4982 0.17.</p>
4983
4984 <ul>
4985
4986  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
4987  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
4988    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
4989  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
4990  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
4991  <li>Fix include orders</li>
4992  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
4993  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
4994  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
4995    the palette size is the same.</li>
4996  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
4997  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
4998  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
4999  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
5000    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
5001
5002 </ul>
5003
5004 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
5005 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
5006 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
5007
5008       </div>
5009       <div class="tags">
5010
5011
5012         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
5013
5014
5015       </div>
5016     </div>
5017     <div class="padding"></div>
5018
5019     <div class="entry">
5020       <div class="title">
5021         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
5022       </div>
5023       <div class="date">
5024         26th September 2014
5025       </div>
5026       <div class="body">
5027         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5028 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
5029 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
5030 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
5031 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
5032 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
5033 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
5034 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
5035 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
5036 future.  The
5037 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
5038 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
5039 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
5040 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
5041 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
5042
5043 <p>First, download the test ISO via
5044 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
5045 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
5046 or rsync (use
5047 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
5048 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
5049 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
5050 install with some tweaking.</p>
5051
5052 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
5053 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
5054
5055 <p><blockquote><pre>
5056 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
5057 </pre></blockquote></p>
5058
5059 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
5060 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
5061 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
5062 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
5063
5064 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
5065 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
5066 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
5067 your need.</p>
5068
5069 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
5070 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
5071 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
5072 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
5073 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
5074 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
5075 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
5076 days.</p>
5077
5078 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
5079 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
5080 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
5081 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
5082 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
5083 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
5084 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
5085 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
5086 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
5087
5088 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
5089 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
5090 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
5091
5092       </div>
5093       <div class="tags">
5094
5095
5096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5097
5098
5099       </div>
5100     </div>
5101     <div class="padding"></div>
5102
5103     <div class="entry">
5104       <div class="title">
5105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
5106       </div>
5107       <div class="date">
5108         25th September 2014
5109       </div>
5110       <div class="body">
5111         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
5112 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
5113 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
5114 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
5115 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
5116 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
5117 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
5118 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
5119 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
5120 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
5121 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
5122 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
5123 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
5124
5125 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
5126 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
5127 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
5128 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
5129 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
5130 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
5131 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
5132 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
5133 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
5134 list</a>. :)</p>
5135
5136       </div>
5137       <div class="tags">
5138
5139
5140         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
5141
5142
5143       </div>
5144     </div>
5145     <div class="padding"></div>
5146
5147     <div class="entry">
5148       <div class="title">
5149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
5150       </div>
5151       <div class="date">
5152         16th September 2014
5153       </div>
5154       <div class="body">
5155         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
5156 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
5157 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
5158 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
5159 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
5160 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
5161 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
5162 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
5163 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
5164 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
5165 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
5166 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
5167 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
5168 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
5169
5170 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
5171 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
5172 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
5173 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
5174 depend on the small and clever package
5175 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
5176 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
5177 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
5178 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
5179 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
5180 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
5181 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
5182 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
5183 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
5184 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
5185 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
5186
5187 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
5188 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
5189 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
5190 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
5191 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
5192 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
5193 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
5194 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
5195 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
5196 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
5197 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
5198 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
5199 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
5200 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
5201 dialog.</p>
5202
5203 <p><table>
5204
5205 <tr>
5206 <th>Machine/setup</th>
5207 <th>Original tasksel</th>
5208 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
5209 <th>Reduction</th>
5210 </tr>
5211
5212 <tr>
5213 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
5214 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
5215 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
5216 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
5217 </tr>
5218
5219 <tr>
5220 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
5221 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
5222 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
5223 <td>23 min 40%</td>
5224 </tr>
5225
5226 <tr>
5227 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
5228 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
5229 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
5230 <td>11 min 50%</td>
5231 </tr>
5232
5233 <tr>
5234 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
5235 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
5236 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
5237 <td>2 min 33%</td>
5238 </tr>
5239
5240 <tr>
5241 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
5242 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
5243 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
5244 <td>4 min 21%</td>
5245 </tr>
5246
5247 </table></p>
5248
5249 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
5250 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
5251 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
5252 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
5253 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
5254 installed.</p>
5255
5256 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
5257 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
5258 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
5259 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
5260 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
5261 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
5262 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
5263 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
5264 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
5265 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
5266 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
5267 for the entire installation.</p>
5268
5269 <p>I've implemented this in the
5270 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
5271 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
5272 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
5273 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
5274 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
5275
5276 <p><blockquote><pre>
5277 #!/bin/sh
5278 set -e
5279 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
5280 info() {
5281     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
5282 }
5283 error() {
5284     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
5285 }
5286 override_install() {
5287     apt-install eatmydata || true
5288     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
5289         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
5290             file=/usr/bin/$bin
5291             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
5292             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
5293                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
5294                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
5295                     > /target$file.edu
5296                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
5297                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
5298                     --rename --quiet --add $file
5299                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
5300             else
5301                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
5302             fi
5303         done
5304     else
5305         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
5306     fi
5307 }
5308
5309 override_install
5310 </pre></blockquote></p>
5311
5312 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
5313 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
5314
5315 <p><blockquote><pre>
5316 #! /bin/sh -e
5317 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
5318 error() {
5319     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
5320 }
5321 remove_install_override() {
5322     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
5323         file=/usr/bin/$bin
5324         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
5325             rm /target$file
5326             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
5327                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
5328             rm /target$file.edu
5329         else
5330             error "Missing divert for $file."
5331         fi
5332     done
5333     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
5334 }
5335
5336 remove_install_override
5337 </pre></blockquote></p>
5338
5339 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
5340 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
5341 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
5342
5343 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
5344 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
5345 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
5346 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
5347 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
5348 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
5349 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
5350 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
5351 everyone.</p>
5352
5353 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
5354 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
5355 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
5356 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
5357
5358 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
5359 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
5360 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
5361 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
5362 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
5363
5364 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
5365 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
5366 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
5367 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
5368 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
5369
5370       </div>
5371       <div class="tags">
5372
5373
5374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5375
5376
5377       </div>
5378     </div>
5379     <div class="padding"></div>
5380
5381     <div class="entry">
5382       <div class="title">
5383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
5384       </div>
5385       <div class="date">
5386         10th September 2014
5387       </div>
5388       <div class="body">
5389         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
5390 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
5391 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
5392 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
5393 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
5394 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
5395 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
5396 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
5397 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
5398 those problems are gone now.</p>
5399
5400 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
5401 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
5402 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
5403 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
5404 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
5405
5406 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
5407 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
5408 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
5409
5410 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
5411 line:</p>
5412
5413 <p><blockquote><pre>
5414 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
5415 </pre></blockquote></p>
5416
5417 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
5418 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
5419 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
5420 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
5421
5422 <p><blockquote><pre>
5423 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
5424 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
5425 %
5426 </pre></blockquote></p>
5427
5428 <p>Now if only
5429 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
5430 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
5431 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
5432 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
5433 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
5434 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
5435 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
5436 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
5437 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
5438
5439       </div>
5440       <div class="tags">
5441
5442
5443         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5444
5445
5446       </div>
5447     </div>
5448     <div class="padding"></div>
5449
5450     <div class="entry">
5451       <div class="title">
5452         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
5453       </div>
5454       <div class="date">
5455         17th June 2014
5456       </div>
5457       <div class="body">
5458         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5459 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
5460 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
5461 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
5462 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
5463
5464 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
5465 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
5466 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
5467 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
5468 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
5469 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
5470 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
5471 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
5472 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
5473 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
5474 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
5475 goals.</p>
5476
5477 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
5478 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
5479 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
5480 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
5481 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
5482 chapters together into one large web page (aka
5483 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
5484 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
5485 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
5486 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
5487 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
5488 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
5489 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
5490 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
5491 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
5492 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
5493 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
5494 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
5495 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
5496 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
5497 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
5498 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
5499 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
5500 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
5501
5502 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
5503 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
5504 track the English original.  For this we use the
5505 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
5506 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
5507 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
5508 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
5509 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
5510 files), which the translations update with the native language
5511 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
5512 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
5513 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
5514 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
5515 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
5516 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
5517 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
5518 of the documentation.</p>
5519
5520 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
5521 recommend using
5522 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
5523 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
5524 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
5525 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
5526 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
5527 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
5528 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
5529 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
5530
5531 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
5532 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
5533 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
5534 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
5535 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
5536 translated images by storing translated versions in
5537 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
5538 package maintainers know more.</p>
5539
5540 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
5541 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
5542 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
5543 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
5544 PDF version</a> or the
5545 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
5546 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
5547 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
5548
5549 <p>To learn more, check out
5550 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
5551 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
5552 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
5553 manual on the wiki</a> and
5554 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
5555 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
5556
5557       </div>
5558       <div class="tags">
5559
5560
5561         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5562
5563
5564       </div>
5565     </div>
5566     <div class="padding"></div>
5567
5568     <div class="entry">
5569       <div class="title">
5570         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
5571       </div>
5572       <div class="date">
5573         23rd April 2014
5574       </div>
5575       <div class="body">
5576         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
5577 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
5578 So I implemented one, using
5579 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
5580 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
5581 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
5582 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
5583 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
5584 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
5585
5586 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
5587 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
5588 packages to install.  The first part is in
5589 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
5590 this:</p>
5591
5592 <p><blockquote><pre>
5593 Task: isenkram
5594 Section: hardware
5595 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
5596  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
5597  proposed.
5598 Test-new-install: mark show
5599 Relevance: 8
5600 Packages: for-current-hardware
5601 </pre></blockquote></p>
5602
5603 <p>The second part is in
5604 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
5605 this:</p>
5606
5607 <p><blockquote><pre>
5608 #!/bin/sh
5609 #
5610 (
5611     isenkram-lookup
5612     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
5613 ) | sort -u
5614 </pre></blockquote></p>
5615
5616 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
5617 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
5618 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
5619 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
5620 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
5621 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
5622
5623 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
5624 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
5625 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
5626 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
5627 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
5628 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
5629 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
5630 the python-apt code (bug
5631 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
5632 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
5633 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
5634 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
5635 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
5636 unstable today.</p>
5637
5638 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
5639 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
5640 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
5641 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
5642 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
5643 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
5644 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
5645 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
5646 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
5647
5648 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
5649 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
5650 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
5651 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
5652 package.  See also
5653 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
5654 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
5655 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
5656 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
5657
5658       </div>
5659       <div class="tags">
5660
5661
5662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5663
5664
5665       </div>
5666     </div>
5667     <div class="padding"></div>
5668
5669     <div class="entry">
5670       <div class="title">
5671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
5672       </div>
5673       <div class="date">
5674         15th April 2014
5675       </div>
5676       <div class="body">
5677         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
5678 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
5679 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
5680 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
5681 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
5682 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
5683
5684 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
5685 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
5686 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
5687 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
5688 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
5689 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
5690 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
5691
5692 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
5693 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
5694 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
5695 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
5696 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
5697 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
5698 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
5699 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
5700 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
5701 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
5702 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
5703 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
5704
5705 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
5706 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
5707 become root:</p>
5708
5709 <p><pre>
5710 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
5711   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
5712   u-boot-tools
5713 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
5714   freedom-maker
5715 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
5716 </pre></p>
5717
5718 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
5719 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
5720 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
5721 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
5722 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
5723 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
5724 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
5725 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
5726
5727 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
5728 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
5729 the preseed values:</p>
5730
5731 <p><pre>
5732 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
5733 </pre></p>
5734
5735 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
5736 it still work.</p>
5737
5738 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
5739 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
5740 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
5741 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
5742 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
5743 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
5744 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
5745
5746 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
5747 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
5748 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
5749 irc.debian.org)</a> and
5750 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5751 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5752
5753       </div>
5754       <div class="tags">
5755
5756
5757         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5758
5759
5760       </div>
5761     </div>
5762     <div class="padding"></div>
5763
5764     <div class="entry">
5765       <div class="title">
5766         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
5767       </div>
5768       <div class="date">
5769          9th April 2014
5770       </div>
5771       <div class="body">
5772         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
5773 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
5774 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
5775 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
5776 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
5777 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
5778 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
5779 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
5780 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
5781 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
5782 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
5783 have looked at a system called
5784 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
5785 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
5786
5787 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
5788 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
5789 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
5790 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
5791 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
5792 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
5793 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
5794 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
5795 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
5796 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
5797 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
5798 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
5799 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
5800
5801 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
5802 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
5803 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
5804 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
5805 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
5806 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
5807 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
5808 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
5809 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
5810 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
5811 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
5812 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
5813 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
5814 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
5815 account.</p>
5816
5817 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
5818 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
5819 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
5820 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
5821 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
5822 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
5823 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
5824
5825 <p><blockquote><pre>
5826 [s3c]
5827 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5828 backend-login: API-login
5829 backend-password: API-password
5830 fs-passphrase: local-password
5831 </pre></blockquote></p>
5832
5833 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
5834 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
5835 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
5836 details and password to create it:</p>
5837
5838 <p><blockquote><pre>
5839 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
5840 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5841   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5842 Enter backend login:
5843 Enter backend password:
5844 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
5845 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
5846 Enter encryption password:
5847 Confirm encryption password:
5848 Generating random encryption key...
5849 Creating metadata tables...
5850 Dumping metadata...
5851 ..objects..
5852 ..blocks..
5853 ..inodes..
5854 ..inode_blocks..
5855 ..symlink_targets..
5856 ..names..
5857 ..contents..
5858 ..ext_attributes..
5859 Compressing and uploading metadata...
5860 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
5861 # </pre></blockquote></p>
5862
5863 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
5864
5865 <p><blockquote><pre>
5866 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5867   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
5868 Using 4 upload threads.
5869 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
5870 Reading metadata...
5871 ..objects..
5872 ..blocks..
5873 ..inodes..
5874 ..inode_blocks..
5875 ..symlink_targets..
5876 ..names..
5877 ..contents..
5878 ..ext_attributes..
5879 Mounting filesystem...
5880 # df -h /s3ql
5881 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
5882 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
5883 #
5884 </pre></blockquote></p>
5885
5886 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
5887 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
5888 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
5889 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
5890 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
5891 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
5892
5893 <p><blockquote><pre>
5894 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
5895 #
5896 </pre></blockquote></p>
5897
5898 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
5899 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
5900 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
5901 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
5902 file system:</p>
5903
5904 <p><blockquote><pre>
5905 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5906 Using cached metadata.
5907 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
5908 Checking DB integrity...
5909 Creating temporary extra indices...
5910 Checking lost+found...
5911 Checking cached objects...
5912 Checking names (refcounts)...
5913 Checking contents (names)...
5914 Checking contents (inodes)...
5915 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
5916 Checking objects (reference counts)...
5917 Checking objects (backend)...
5918 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
5919 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
5920 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
5921 Checking objects (sizes)...
5922 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
5923 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
5924 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
5925 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
5926 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
5927 Checking inodes (sizes)...
5928 Checking extended attributes (names)...
5929 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
5930 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
5931 Checking directory reachability...
5932 Checking unix conventions...
5933 Checking referential integrity...
5934 Dropping temporary indices...
5935 Backing up old metadata...
5936 Dumping metadata...
5937 ..objects..
5938 ..blocks..
5939 ..inodes..
5940 ..inode_blocks..
5941 ..symlink_targets..
5942 ..names..
5943 ..contents..
5944 ..ext_attributes..
5945 Compressing and uploading metadata...
5946 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
5947 #
5948 </pre></blockquote></p>
5949
5950 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
5951 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
5952 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
5953 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
5954 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
5955 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
5956 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
5957 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
5958 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
5959 working set.</p>
5960
5961 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
5962 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
5963 busy:</p>
5964
5965 <p><blockquote><pre>
5966 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5967   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
5968 Using 8 upload threads.
5969 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
5970 #
5971 </pre></blockquote></p>
5972
5973 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
5974 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
5975 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
5976 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
5977 s3qlctrl:
5978
5979 <p><blockquote><pre>
5980 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
5981 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
5982 #
5983 </pre></blockquote></p>
5984
5985 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
5986 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
5987 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
5988 a report:</p>
5989
5990 <p><blockquote><pre>
5991 # s3qlstat /s3ql
5992 Directory entries:    9141
5993 Inodes:               9143
5994 Data blocks:          8851
5995 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
5996 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
5997 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
5998 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
5999 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
6000 #
6001 </pre></blockquote></p>
6002
6003 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
6004 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
6005 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
6006 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
6007 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
6008 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
6009 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
6010 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
6011 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
6012 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
6013 best.</p>
6014
6015 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
6016 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
6017 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
6018 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
6019 poster is titled
6020 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
6021 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
6022 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
6023 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
6024 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
6025
6026 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
6027 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
6028 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
6029 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
6030 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
6031 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
6032 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
6033 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
6034
6035 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
6036 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
6037 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
6038 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
6039 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
6040 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
6041 only read from it.</p>
6042
6043 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6044 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6045 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6046
6047       </div>
6048       <div class="tags">
6049
6050
6051         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6052
6053
6054       </div>
6055     </div>
6056     <div class="padding"></div>
6057
6058     <div class="entry">
6059       <div class="title">
6060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
6061       </div>
6062       <div class="date">
6063         14th March 2014
6064       </div>
6065       <div class="body">
6066         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
6067 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
6068 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
6069 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
6070 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
6071 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
6072 release (0.2).</p>
6073
6074 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
6075 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
6076 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
6077 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
6078 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
6079 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
6080 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
6081 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
6082 and build using
6083 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
6084 with a user with sudo access to become root:
6085
6086 <pre>
6087 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
6088   freedom-maker
6089 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
6090   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
6091   u-boot-tools
6092 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
6093 </pre>
6094
6095 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
6096 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
6097 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
6098 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
6099 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
6100 kpartx call.</p>
6101
6102 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
6103 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
6104 the preseed values:</p>
6105
6106 <pre>
6107 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
6108 </pre>
6109
6110 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
6111 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
6112 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
6113 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
6114 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
6115 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
6116
6117 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
6118 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
6119 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
6120 irc.debian.org)</a> and
6121 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6122 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6123
6124       </div>
6125       <div class="tags">
6126
6127
6128         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6129
6130
6131       </div>
6132     </div>
6133     <div class="padding"></div>
6134
6135     <div class="entry">
6136       <div class="title">
6137         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
6138       </div>
6139       <div class="date">
6140         22nd February 2014
6141       </div>
6142       <div class="body">
6143         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
6144 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
6145 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
6146 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
6147 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
6148 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
6149 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
6150 proper home since then.</p>
6151
6152 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
6153 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
6154 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
6155 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
6156 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
6157
6158 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
6159 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
6160 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
6161 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
6162 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
6163 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
6164 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
6165 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
6166 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
6167
6168       </div>
6169       <div class="tags">
6170
6171
6172         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6173
6174
6175       </div>
6176     </div>
6177     <div class="padding"></div>
6178
6179     <div class="entry">
6180       <div class="title">
6181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
6182       </div>
6183       <div class="date">
6184          3rd February 2014
6185       </div>
6186       <div class="body">
6187         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
6188 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
6189 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
6190 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
6191 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
6192 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
6193 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
6194 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
6195 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
6196
6197 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
6198 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
6199 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
6200 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
6201 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
6202 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
6203
6204 <p><blockquote><pre>
6205 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
6206 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
6207 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
6208 dhclient /dev/eth0
6209 </pre></blockquote></p>
6210
6211 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
6212 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
6213 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
6214
6215 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
6216 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
6217 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
6218 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
6219 side.</p>
6220
6221 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
6222 stuff:</p>
6223
6224 <p><blockquote><pre>
6225 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
6226 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
6227 EOF
6228 apt-get update
6229 apt-get dist-upgrade
6230 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
6231     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
6232 update-alternatives --config runsystem
6233 </pre></blockquote></p>
6234
6235 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
6236 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
6237 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
6238 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
6239 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
6240 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
6241 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
6242 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
6243 ssh instead.
6244
6245 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
6246 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
6247 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
6248 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
6249 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
6250 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
6251
6252 <p><blockquote><pre>
6253 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
6254 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
6255 EOF
6256 </pre></blockquote></p>
6257
6258 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
6259 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
6260 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
6261 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
6262
6263 <p><blockquote><pre>
6264 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
6265 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
6266 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
6267 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
6268 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
6269 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
6270 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
6271 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
6272 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
6273 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
6274 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
6275 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
6276 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
6277 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
6278 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
6279 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
6280 #
6281 </pre></blockquote></p>
6282
6283 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
6284 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
6285 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
6286 command line stuff.<p>
6287
6288       </div>
6289       <div class="tags">
6290
6291
6292         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6293
6294
6295       </div>
6296     </div>
6297     <div class="padding"></div>
6298
6299     <div class="entry">
6300       <div class="title">
6301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
6302       </div>
6303       <div class="date">
6304         14th January 2014
6305       </div>
6306       <div class="body">
6307         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
6308 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
6309 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
6310 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
6311 the source.  The company behind it provide
6312 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
6313 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
6314 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
6315 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
6316 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
6317 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
6318 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
6319 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
6320 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
6321 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
6322 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
6323 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
6324 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
6325 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
6326 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
6327 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
6328 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
6329 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
6330 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
6331
6332 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
6333
6334 <ul>
6335
6336   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
6337   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
6338   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
6339
6340 </ul>
6341
6342 <p>You can
6343 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6344 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6345 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6346 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6347 include a test suite check.</p>
6348
6349       </div>
6350       <div class="tags">
6351
6352
6353         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6354
6355
6356       </div>
6357     </div>
6358     <div class="padding"></div>
6359
6360     <div class="entry">
6361       <div class="title">
6362         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
6363       </div>
6364       <div class="date">
6365         24th November 2013
6366       </div>
6367       <div class="body">
6368         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
6369 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
6370 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
6371 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
6372 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
6373 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
6374 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
6375 is working on.  I checked the
6376 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
6377 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
6378 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
6379 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
6380 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
6381 These are the release notes:</p>
6382
6383 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
6384
6385 <ul>
6386
6387   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
6388    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
6389    up.</li>
6390
6391   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
6392
6393   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
6394    Matthias Klose.</li>
6395
6396   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
6397    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
6398
6399   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
6400    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
6401    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
6402
6403 </ul>
6404
6405 <p>You can
6406 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6407 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6408 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6409 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6410 include a testsuite check.</p>
6411
6412       </div>
6413       <div class="tags">
6414
6415
6416         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6417
6418
6419       </div>
6420     </div>
6421     <div class="padding"></div>
6422
6423     <div class="entry">
6424       <div class="title">
6425         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
6426       </div>
6427       <div class="date">
6428          2nd November 2013
6429       </div>
6430       <div class="body">
6431         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
6432 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
6433 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
6434 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
6435 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
6436
6437 <p><pre>
6438 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
6439 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
6440 # Provides:          rsyslog
6441 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
6442 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
6443 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
6444 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
6445 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
6446 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
6447 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
6448 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
6449 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
6450 ### END INIT INFO
6451 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
6452 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
6453 </pre></p>
6454
6455 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
6456 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
6457 info/comments.</p>
6458
6459 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
6460 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
6461
6462 <p><pre>
6463 #!/bin/sh
6464
6465 # Define LSB log_* functions.
6466 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
6467 # and status_of_proc is working.
6468 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
6469
6470 #
6471 # Function that starts the daemon/service
6472
6473 #
6474 do_start()
6475 {
6476         # Return
6477         #   0 if daemon has been started
6478         #   1 if daemon was already running
6479         #   2 if daemon could not be started
6480         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
6481                 || return 1
6482         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
6483                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
6484                 || return 2
6485         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
6486         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
6487         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
6488 }
6489
6490 #
6491 # Function that stops the daemon/service
6492 #
6493 do_stop()
6494 {
6495         # Return
6496         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
6497         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
6498         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
6499         #   other if a failure occurred
6500         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6501         RETVAL="$?"
6502         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
6503         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
6504         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
6505         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
6506         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
6507         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
6508         # sleep for some time.
6509         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
6510         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
6511         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
6512         rm -f $PIDFILE
6513         return "$RETVAL"
6514 }
6515
6516 #
6517 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
6518 #
6519 do_reload() {
6520         #
6521         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
6522         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
6523         # then implement that here.
6524         #
6525         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6526         return 0
6527 }
6528
6529 SCRIPTNAME=$1
6530 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
6531 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
6532 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
6533     script="$1"
6534     shift
6535     . $script
6536 else
6537     exit 0
6538 fi
6539
6540 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
6541 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
6542
6543 # Exit if the package is not installed
6544 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
6545
6546 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
6547 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
6548
6549 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
6550 . /lib/init/vars.sh
6551
6552 case "$1" in
6553   start)
6554         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
6555         do_start
6556         case "$?" in
6557                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6558                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6559         esac
6560         ;;
6561   stop)
6562         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
6563         do_stop
6564         case "$?" in
6565                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6566                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6567         esac
6568         ;;
6569   status)
6570         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
6571         ;;
6572   #reload|force-reload)
6573         #
6574         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
6575         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
6576         #
6577         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
6578         #do_reload
6579         #log_end_msg $?
6580         #;;
6581   restart|force-reload)
6582         #
6583         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
6584         # 'force-reload' alias
6585         #
6586         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
6587         do_stop
6588         case "$?" in
6589           0|1)
6590                 do_start
6591                 case "$?" in
6592                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
6593                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
6594                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
6595                 esac
6596                 ;;
6597           *)
6598                 # Failed to stop
6599                 log_end_msg 1
6600                 ;;
6601         esac
6602         ;;
6603   *)
6604         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
6605         exit 3
6606         ;;
6607 esac
6608
6609 :
6610 </pre></p>
6611
6612 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
6613 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
6614 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
6615 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
6616
6617 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
6618 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
6619 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
6620 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
6621 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
6622
6623       </div>
6624       <div class="tags">
6625
6626
6627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6628
6629
6630       </div>
6631     </div>
6632     <div class="padding"></div>
6633
6634     <div class="entry">
6635       <div class="title">
6636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
6637       </div>
6638       <div class="date">
6639          1st November 2013
6640       </div>
6641       <div class="body">
6642         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
6643 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
6644 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
6645 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
6646 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
6647 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
6648 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
6649 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
6650 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
6651 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
6652 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
6653 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
6654
6655 <p>The source is now available from
6656 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
6657
6658       </div>
6659       <div class="tags">
6660
6661
6662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6663
6664
6665       </div>
6666     </div>
6667     <div class="padding"></div>
6668
6669     <div class="entry">
6670       <div class="title">
6671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
6672       </div>
6673       <div class="date">
6674         27th October 2013
6675       </div>
6676       <div class="body">
6677         <p>The
6678 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6679 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6680 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6681 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6682 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6683 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6684 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6685 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6686 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6687 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6688 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6689 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6690
6691 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6692 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6693 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6694 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6695 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6696 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6697 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6698 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6699 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6700 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6701 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6702 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6703 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6704 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6705 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6706 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
6707 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
6708 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
6709 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
6710 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
6711 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
6712 available from
6713 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
6714 upstream project page</a>.</p>
6715
6716 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
6717 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
6718 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
6719 list:</p>
6720
6721 <p><pre>
6722 #!/bin/sh
6723 set -e # Exit on first error
6724 rootdir="$1"
6725 cd "$rootdir"
6726 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
6727 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
6728 EOF
6729 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
6730 # install a kernel somewhere too.
6731 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
6732     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6733 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6734 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
6735 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
6736 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
6737 </pre></p>
6738
6739 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
6740 to build the image:</p>
6741
6742 <pre>
6743 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
6744     --variant minbase \
6745     --arch armel \
6746     --distribution jessie \
6747     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
6748     --image test.img \
6749     --size 600M \
6750     --bootsize 64M \
6751     --boottype vfat \
6752     --log-level debug \
6753     --verbose \
6754     --no-kernel \
6755     --no-extlinux \
6756     --root-password raspberry \
6757     --hostname raspberrypi \
6758     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
6759     --customize `pwd`/customize \
6760     --package netbase \
6761     --package git-core \
6762     --package binutils \
6763     --package ca-certificates \
6764     --package wget \
6765     --package kmod
6766 </pre></p>
6767
6768 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
6769 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
6770 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
6771 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
6772 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
6773 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
6774 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
6775
6776 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
6777 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
6778 build dependency list.</p>
6779
6780 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
6781 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
6782 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
6783 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
6784
6785       </div>
6786       <div class="tags">
6787
6788
6789         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
6790
6791
6792       </div>
6793     </div>
6794     <div class="padding"></div>
6795
6796     <div class="entry">
6797       <div class="title">
6798         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
6799       </div>
6800       <div class="date">
6801         15th October 2013
6802       </div>
6803       <div class="body">
6804         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6805 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6806 these. :)</p>
6807
6808 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6809 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6810 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6811 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6812 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6813 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6814 hope you will to. :)</p>
6815
6816 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6817 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6818 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6819 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6820 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6821
6822 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6823 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6824 statement under the heading
6825 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6826 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6827 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6828 too.</p>
6829
6830       </div>
6831       <div class="tags">
6832
6833
6834         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6835
6836
6837       </div>
6838     </div>
6839     <div class="padding"></div>
6840
6841     <div class="entry">
6842       <div class="title">
6843         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
6844       </div>
6845       <div class="date">
6846         27th September 2013
6847       </div>
6848       <div class="body">
6849         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
6850 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
6851 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
6852 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
6853
6854 <ul>
6855
6856 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
6857 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
6858
6859 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
6860 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6861
6862 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
6863 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
6864 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
6865 (Youtube)</li>
6866
6867 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
6868 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
6869
6870 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
6871 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6872
6873 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
6874 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
6875 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
6876
6877 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
6878 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
6879 (Youtube)</li>
6880
6881 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
6882 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
6883
6884 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
6885 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
6886
6887 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
6888 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
6889 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
6890
6891 </ul>
6892
6893 <p>A larger list is available from
6894 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
6895 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
6896
6897 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
6898 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
6899 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
6900 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
6901 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
6902 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
6903 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
6904 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
6905 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
6906 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6907 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6908
6909       </div>
6910       <div class="tags">
6911
6912
6913         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6914
6915
6916       </div>
6917     </div>
6918     <div class="padding"></div>
6919
6920     <div class="entry">
6921       <div class="title">
6922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
6923       </div>
6924       <div class="date">
6925         10th September 2013
6926       </div>
6927       <div class="body">
6928         <p>I was introduced to the
6929 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
6930 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
6931 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
6932 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
6933 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
6934 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
6935 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
6936 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
6937
6938 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
6939 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
6940 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
6941 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
6942 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
6943
6944 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
6945 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
6946 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
6947 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
6948 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
6949 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
6950 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
6951 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
6952 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
6953 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
6954 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
6955 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
6956 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
6957 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
6958 missing in Debian).</p>
6959
6960 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
6961 scripts
6962 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
6963 and a administrative web interface
6964 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
6965 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
6966 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
6967 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
6968 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
6969 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
6970 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6971 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6972 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6973 this is really working yet, see
6974 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6975 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6976 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6977 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6978 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6979 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6980 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6981
6982 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6983 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6984 at.</p>
6985
6986 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
6987
6988 <ol>
6989
6990 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
6991 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
6992 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
6993 to the Debian installer:<p>
6994 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
6995
6996 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
6997 install on.</li>
6998
6999 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
7000 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
7001
7002 </ol>
7003
7004 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
7005
7006 <ol>
7007
7008 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
7009 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
7010 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
7011 <pre>
7012 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
7013 </pre></li>
7014 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
7015 <pre>
7016 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
7017    apt-key add -
7018 apt-get update
7019 apt-get install freedombox-setup
7020 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
7021 </pre></li>
7022 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
7023
7024 </ol>
7025
7026 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
7027 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
7028 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
7029 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
7030 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
7031
7032 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
7033 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
7034 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
7035 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
7036
7037 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
7038 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
7039 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
7040 irc.debian.org and the
7041 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
7042 mailing list</a>.</p>
7043
7044 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
7045 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
7046 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
7047 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
7048 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
7049 default password is 'secret'.</p>
7050
7051       </div>
7052       <div class="tags">
7053
7054
7055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7056
7057
7058       </div>
7059     </div>
7060     <div class="padding"></div>
7061
7062     <div class="entry">
7063       <div class="title">
7064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
7065       </div>
7066       <div class="date">
7067         18th August 2013
7068       </div>
7069       <div class="body">
7070         <p>Earlier, I reported about
7071 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
7072 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
7073 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
7074 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
7075 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
7076 currently on the disk.</p>
7077
7078 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
7079 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
7080 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
7081 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
7082 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
7083 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
7084 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
7085 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
7086 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
7087 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
7088 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
7089 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
7090 the broken disks.</p>
7091
7092       </div>
7093       <div class="tags">
7094
7095
7096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7097
7098
7099       </div>
7100     </div>
7101     <div class="padding"></div>
7102
7103     <div class="entry">
7104       <div class="title">
7105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
7106       </div>
7107       <div class="date">
7108         17th July 2013
7109       </div>
7110       <div class="body">
7111         <p>Today I switched to
7112 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7113 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7114 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7115 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
7116 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7117 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7118 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7119 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7120 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7121 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7122 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7123 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7124 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7125 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7126 station from now on.</p>
7127
7128 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7129 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7130 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7131 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7132 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7133 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7134 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7135 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7136 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7137 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7138 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7139 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7140
7141 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
7142 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
7143 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
7144 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
7145 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
7146 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
7147 parameters are tuned:</p>
7148
7149 <ul>
7150
7151 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
7152     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
7153
7154 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
7155     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
7156     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
7157
7158 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
7159     systems.</li>
7160
7161 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
7162     /etc/fstab.</li>
7163
7164 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
7165
7166 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
7167     cron.daily).</li>
7168
7169 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
7170     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
7171
7172 </ul>
7173
7174 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
7175 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
7176 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
7177 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
7178 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
7179 from getting the data on the disk (see
7180 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
7181 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
7182 right thing to do.</p>
7183
7184 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
7185 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
7186 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
7187
7188 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
7189 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
7190 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
7191 instead of during my work.</p>
7192
7193 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
7194 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
7195
7196 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
7197 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
7198 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
7199
7200 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
7201 there.</p>
7202
7203 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
7204 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
7205 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
7206 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
7207 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
7208 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
7209 back.</p>
7210
7211       </div>
7212       <div class="tags">
7213
7214
7215         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7216
7217
7218       </div>
7219     </div>
7220     <div class="padding"></div>
7221
7222     <div class="entry">
7223       <div class="title">
7224         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
7225       </div>
7226       <div class="date">
7227         10th July 2013
7228       </div>
7229       <div class="body">
7230         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
7231 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
7232 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
7233 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
7234 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
7235 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
7236 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
7237 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
7238
7239 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
7240 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
7241 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
7242 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
7243 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
7244 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
7245 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
7246 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
7247 lock up when I download a new
7248 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
7249 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
7250 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
7251
7252 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7253 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
7254 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7255 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
7256 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7257 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7258
7259 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7260 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
7261 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7262 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
7263 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7264 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7265
7266 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
7267 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
7268 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
7269 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
7270 exist).</p>
7271
7272       </div>
7273       <div class="tags">
7274
7275
7276         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7277
7278
7279       </div>
7280     </div>
7281     <div class="padding"></div>
7282
7283     <div class="entry">
7284       <div class="title">
7285         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
7286       </div>
7287       <div class="date">
7288          9th July 2013
7289       </div>
7290       <div class="body">
7291         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
7292 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
7293 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
7294 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
7295 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7296 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
7297 Bitraf</a>.</p>
7298
7299 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
7300 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
7301 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
7302 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
7303 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
7304
7305       </div>
7306       <div class="tags">
7307
7308
7309         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7310
7311
7312       </div>
7313     </div>
7314     <div class="padding"></div>
7315
7316     <div class="entry">
7317       <div class="title">
7318         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
7319       </div>
7320       <div class="date">
7321          5th July 2013
7322       </div>
7323       <div class="body">
7324         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
7325 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
7326 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
7327 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
7328 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
7329 ended up picking a
7330 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
7331 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
7332 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
7333 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
7334 on that below.</p>
7335
7336 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7337 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7338 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7339 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7340 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7341 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
7342 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
7343 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
7344 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
7345
7346 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
7347 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
7348 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
7349 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
7350 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
7351 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
7352 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
7353
7354 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
7355 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
7356
7357 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
7358 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
7359 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
7360 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
7361 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
7362 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
7363 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
7364 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
7365 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
7366 kernel developers as
7367 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
7368 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
7369 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
7370 Lenovo forums, both for
7371 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
7372 2012-11-10</a> and for
7373 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
7374 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
7375 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
7376 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
7377 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
7378 There is even a
7379 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
7380 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
7381 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
7382
7383 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
7384 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
7385 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
7386 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
7387 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7388 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7389 fixed. :)</p>
7390
7391       </div>
7392       <div class="tags">
7393
7394
7395         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7396
7397
7398       </div>
7399     </div>
7400     <div class="padding"></div>
7401
7402     <div class="entry">
7403       <div class="title">
7404         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
7405       </div>
7406       <div class="date">
7407          4th July 2013
7408       </div>
7409       <div class="body">
7410         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7411 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7412 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7413 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7414 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7415 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7416 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7417 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7418 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7419
7420 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7421 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7422 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7423 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7424 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7425 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7426 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7427
7428 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7429 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7430 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7431 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7432 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7433 new laptop now. :)</p>
7434
7435 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7436
7437       </div>
7438       <div class="tags">
7439
7440
7441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7442
7443
7444       </div>
7445     </div>
7446     <div class="padding"></div>
7447
7448     <div class="entry">
7449       <div class="title">
7450         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
7451       </div>
7452       <div class="date">
7453         25th June 2013
7454       </div>
7455       <div class="body">
7456         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7457 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7458 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7459 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7460 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7461 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7462 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7463 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7464 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7465 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7466 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7467
7468 <p><pre>
7469 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7470 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7471 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7472 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7473 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7474 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7475 firmware-ipw2x00
7476 firmware-ipw2x00
7477 Preconfiguring packages ...
7478 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7479 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7480 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7481 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7482 #
7483 </pre></p>
7484
7485 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7486 printed instead:</p>
7487
7488 <p><pre>
7489 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7490 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7491 #
7492 </pre></p>
7493
7494 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7495 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7496
7497 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7498 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7499 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7500 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7501 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7502 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7503 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7504 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7505 machine.</p>
7506
7507 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7508 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7509 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7510 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7511 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7512 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7513
7514       </div>
7515       <div class="tags">
7516
7517
7518         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7519
7520
7521       </div>
7522     </div>
7523     <div class="padding"></div>
7524
7525     <div class="entry">
7526       <div class="title">
7527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
7528       </div>
7529       <div class="date">
7530         11th June 2013
7531       </div>
7532       <div class="body">
7533         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
7534 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
7535 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
7536 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
7537 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
7538 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
7539 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
7540 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
7541 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
7542 i915 driver used by the
7543 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7544 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
7545
7546 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
7547 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
7548 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
7549 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
7550 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
7551
7552 <pre>
7553 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
7554 update-initramfs -u -k all
7555 </pre>
7556
7557 <p>Since March 2012 there is
7558 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
7559 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
7560 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
7561 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
7562 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
7563 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
7564 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
7565 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
7566 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
7567 number.</p>
7568
7569 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
7570 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
7571
7572 <p><pre>
7573 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
7574     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
7575     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
7576  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
7577  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
7578     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
7579  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
7580     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
7581  Latency: 0
7582  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
7583  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
7584  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
7585  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
7586  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
7587  Capabilities: <access denied>
7588  Kernel driver in use: i915
7589 </pre></p>
7590
7591 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
7592
7593 <p><pre>
7594 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
7595        ...
7596         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
7597         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
7598        ...
7599 }
7600 </pre></p>
7601
7602 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
7603 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
7604 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
7605 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
7606 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
7607 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
7608 yet shown up in
7609 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
7610 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
7611 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
7612 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
7613 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
7614 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
7615
7616 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
7617 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
7618 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
7619 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
7620 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
7621 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
7622 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
7623 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
7624 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
7625 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
7626 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
7627 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
7628
7629 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
7630 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
7631 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
7632 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
7633 backlight.</p>
7634
7635       </div>
7636       <div class="tags">
7637
7638
7639         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7640
7641
7642       </div>
7643     </div>
7644     <div class="padding"></div>
7645
7646     <div class="entry">
7647       <div class="title">
7648         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
7649       </div>
7650       <div class="date">
7651         27th May 2013
7652       </div>
7653       <div class="body">
7654         <p>Two days ago, I asked
7655 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
7656 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
7657 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
7658 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
7659 and Windows 8.</p>
7660
7661 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
7662 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
7663 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
7664 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
7665 enough to tell.</p>
7666
7667 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
7668 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
7669 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
7670 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
7671 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
7672 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
7673 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
7674 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
7675 to follow.</p>
7676
7677 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
7678 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
7679 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
7680 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
7681 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
7682 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
7683 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
7684 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
7685
7686 <p>I've updated the
7687 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
7688 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
7689 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
7690 machine.</p>
7691
7692 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
7693 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
7694
7695       </div>
7696       <div class="tags">
7697
7698
7699         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7700
7701
7702       </div>
7703     </div>
7704     <div class="padding"></div>
7705
7706     <div class="entry">
7707       <div class="title">
7708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
7709       </div>
7710       <div class="date">
7711         25th May 2013
7712       </div>
7713       <div class="body">
7714         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
7715 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
7716 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
7717 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
7718 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
7719 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
7720
7721 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
7722 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
7723 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
7724 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
7725 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
7726 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
7727 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
7728 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
7729 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
7730 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
7731
7732 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
7733 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7734 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
7735 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
7736 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
7737 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
7738
7739 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
7740 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
7741 on new Laptops?</p>
7742
7743       </div>
7744       <div class="tags">
7745
7746
7747         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7748
7749
7750       </div>
7751     </div>
7752     <div class="padding"></div>
7753
7754     <div class="entry">
7755       <div class="title">
7756         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
7757       </div>
7758       <div class="date">
7759         17th May 2013
7760       </div>
7761       <div class="body">
7762         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
7763 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
7764 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
7765 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
7766 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
7767 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
7768 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
7769 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
7770 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
7771 donate some money</a>.
7772
7773 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
7774 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
7775 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
7776 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
7777 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
7778
7779 <p>The script,
7780 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
7781 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
7782 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
7783 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
7784
7785 <ol>
7786
7787 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
7788 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
7789 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
7790     our configuration.</li>
7791 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
7792     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
7793     according to the profile specified in the config above,
7794     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
7795 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
7796     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
7797 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
7798
7799 </ol>
7800
7801 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
7802 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
7803 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
7804 the needed packages.</p>
7805
7806 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
7807 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
7808 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
7809 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
7810 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
7811 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
7812
7813 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
7814 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
7815 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
7816
7817 <p><pre>
7818 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
7819 DESKTOP="lxde"
7820 </pre></p>
7821
7822 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
7823 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
7824 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
7825 boot.</p>
7826
7827       </div>
7828       <div class="tags">
7829
7830
7831         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7832
7833
7834       </div>
7835     </div>
7836     <div class="padding"></div>
7837
7838     <div class="entry">
7839       <div class="title">
7840         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
7841       </div>
7842       <div class="date">
7843         11th May 2013
7844       </div>
7845       <div class="body">
7846         <P>In January,
7847 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
7848 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
7849 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
7850 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
7851 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
7852 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
7853 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
7854 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
7855 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
7856 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
7857 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
7858 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
7859
7860 <p><table>
7861 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
7862 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
7863 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
7864 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
7865 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
7866 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
7867 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
7868 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
7869 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
7870 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
7871 </table></p>
7872
7873 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
7874 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
7875 available in experimental.</p>
7876
7877 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
7878 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
7879 for LEGO designers.</p>
7880
7881       </div>
7882       <div class="tags">
7883
7884
7885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7886
7887
7888       </div>
7889     </div>
7890     <div class="padding"></div>
7891
7892     <div class="entry">
7893       <div class="title">
7894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
7895       </div>
7896       <div class="date">
7897          5th May 2013
7898       </div>
7899       <div class="body">
7900         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
7901 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
7902 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
7903 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
7904 soon.</p>
7905
7906 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
7907 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
7908 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
7909 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
7910 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
7911 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
7912 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
7913 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
7914 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
7915 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
7916 Edu.</a>
7917
7918 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
7919 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
7920 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
7921 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
7922 follow.<p>
7923
7924       </div>
7925       <div class="tags">
7926
7927
7928         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7929
7930
7931       </div>
7932     </div>
7933     <div class="padding"></div>
7934
7935     <div class="entry">
7936       <div class="title">
7937         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
7938       </div>
7939       <div class="date">
7940          3rd April 2013
7941       </div>
7942       <div class="body">
7943         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
7944 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
7945 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
7946 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
7947
7948 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
7949 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
7950 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
7951 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
7952 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
7953 BTS. :)</p>
7954
7955       </div>
7956       <div class="tags">
7957
7958
7959         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7960
7961
7962       </div>
7963     </div>
7964     <div class="padding"></div>
7965
7966     <div class="entry">
7967       <div class="title">
7968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
7969       </div>
7970       <div class="date">
7971          2nd February 2013
7972       </div>
7973       <div class="body">
7974         <p>My
7975 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
7976 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
7977 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
7978 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
7979 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
7980 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
7981 version too.</p>
7982
7983 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
7984 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
7985 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
7986 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
7987 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
7988 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
7989 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
7990 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
7991
7992 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
7993 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
7994 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
7995 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
7996 it. :)</p>
7997
7998 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7999 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8000 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8001
8002       </div>
8003       <div class="tags">
8004
8005
8006         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8007
8008
8009       </div>
8010     </div>
8011     <div class="padding"></div>
8012
8013     <div class="entry">
8014       <div class="title">
8015         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
8016       </div>
8017       <div class="date">
8018         22nd January 2013
8019       </div>
8020       <div class="body">
8021         <p>Yesterday, I
8022 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
8023 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
8024 pluggable hardware devices, which I
8025 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
8026 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
8027 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
8028 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
8029 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
8030 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
8031 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
8032 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
8033 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
8034 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
8035
8036 <pre>
8037 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
8038 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
8039 </pre>
8040
8041 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
8042 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
8043 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
8044 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
8045
8046 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
8047 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
8048 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
8049 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
8050 word.</p>
8051
8052 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
8053 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
8054 process.</p>
8055
8056 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
8057 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
8058
8059       </div>
8060       <div class="tags">
8061
8062
8063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8064
8065
8066       </div>
8067     </div>
8068     <div class="padding"></div>
8069
8070     <div class="entry">
8071       <div class="title">
8072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
8073       </div>
8074       <div class="date">
8075         21st January 2013
8076       </div>
8077       <div class="body">
8078         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
8079 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
8080 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
8081 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
8082 it, fetch the
8083 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
8084 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
8085 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
8086 autostart script.</p>
8087
8088 <p>The design is simple:</p>
8089
8090 <ul>
8091
8092 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
8093 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
8094
8095 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
8096 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
8097 initially did.</li>
8098
8099 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
8100 the APT database, a database
8101 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
8102 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
8103
8104 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
8105 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
8106 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
8107 package or packages.</li>
8108
8109 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
8110 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
8111
8112 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
8113 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
8114
8115 </ul>
8116
8117 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
8118 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
8119 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
8120 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
8121
8122 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
8123 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
8124 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
8125 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
8126 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
8127
8128 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
8129 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
8130 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
8131 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
8132 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
8133 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
8134 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
8135 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
8136
8137 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
8138 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
8139 '<tt>svn checkout
8140 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
8141 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
8142 devscripts package.</p>
8143
8144 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
8145 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
8146 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
8147 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
8148 instructions</a> for details.</p>
8149
8150       </div>
8151       <div class="tags">
8152
8153
8154         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8155
8156
8157       </div>
8158     </div>
8159     <div class="padding"></div>
8160
8161     <div class="entry">
8162       <div class="title">
8163         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
8164       </div>
8165       <div class="date">
8166         19th January 2013
8167       </div>
8168       <div class="body">
8169         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
8170 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
8171 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
8172 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
8173 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
8174 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
8175 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
8176 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
8177 not a durable solution.
8178
8179 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
8180 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
8181
8182 <ul>
8183
8184 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
8185   than A4).</li>
8186 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
8187 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
8188 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
8189 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
8190 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
8191 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
8192 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
8193 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
8194 size).</li>
8195 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
8196   X.org packages.</li>
8197 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
8198   the time).
8199
8200 </ul>
8201
8202 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
8203 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
8204 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
8205 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
8206 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
8207 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
8208 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
8209 still be useful.</p>
8210
8211 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
8212 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
8213 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
8214 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
8215 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
8216 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
8217
8218       </div>
8219       <div class="tags">
8220
8221
8222         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8223
8224
8225       </div>
8226     </div>
8227     <div class="padding"></div>
8228
8229     <div class="entry">
8230       <div class="title">
8231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
8232       </div>
8233       <div class="date">
8234         18th January 2013
8235       </div>
8236       <div class="body">
8237         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
8238 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
8239 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
8240 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
8241 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
8242 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
8243 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
8244
8245 <pre>
8246 #!/usr/bin/python
8247 import sys
8248 import apt
8249 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8250     cache = apt.Cache()
8251     cache.open(None)
8252     thepkgs = []
8253     for pkg in cache:
8254         version = pkg.candidate
8255         if version is None:
8256             version = pkg.installed
8257         if version is None:
8258             continue
8259         record = version.record
8260         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
8261             continue
8262         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
8263         for t in mime_types:
8264             t = t.rstrip().strip()
8265             if t == mimetype:
8266                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
8267     return thepkgs
8268 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
8269 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
8270     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
8271 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
8272 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8273     print "  %s" %pkg
8274 </pre>
8275
8276 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
8277
8278 <pre>
8279 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
8280 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
8281   gecko-mediaplayer
8282 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
8283 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
8284   browser-plugin-gnash
8285 %
8286 </pre>
8287
8288 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
8289 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
8290 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
8291 anyone working on adding it?</p>
8292
8293 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
8294 request for icweasel support for this feature is
8295 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
8296 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
8297 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
8298 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
8299
8300       </div>
8301       <div class="tags">
8302
8303
8304         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8305
8306
8307       </div>
8308     </div>
8309     <div class="padding"></div>
8310
8311     <div class="entry">
8312       <div class="title">
8313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
8314       </div>
8315       <div class="date">
8316         16th January 2013
8317       </div>
8318       <div class="body">
8319         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
8320 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
8321 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
8322 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
8323 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
8324 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
8325 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
8326 downloaded by the browser.</p>
8327
8328 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
8329 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
8330 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
8331 can be found on the
8332 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
8333 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
8334 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
8335 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
8336 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
8337
8338 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
8339
8340 <pre>
8341   count MIME type
8342   ----- -----------------------
8343      32 text/plain
8344      30 audio/mpeg
8345      29 image/png
8346      28 image/jpeg
8347      27 application/ogg
8348      26 audio/x-mp3
8349      25 image/tiff
8350      25 image/gif
8351      22 image/bmp
8352      22 audio/x-wav
8353      20 audio/x-flac
8354      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8355      18 video/x-ms-asf
8356      18 audio/x-musepack
8357      18 audio/x-mpeg
8358      18 application/x-ogg
8359      17 video/mpeg
8360      17 audio/x-scpls
8361      17 audio/ogg
8362      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8363 </pre>
8364
8365 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
8366
8367 <pre>
8368   count MIME type
8369   ----- -----------------------
8370      33 text/plain
8371      32 image/png
8372      32 image/jpeg
8373      29 audio/mpeg
8374      27 image/gif
8375      26 image/tiff
8376      26 application/ogg
8377      25 audio/x-mp3
8378      22 image/bmp
8379      21 audio/x-wav
8380      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8381      19 audio/x-mpeg
8382      18 video/mpeg
8383      18 audio/x-scpls
8384      18 audio/x-flac
8385      18 application/x-ogg
8386      17 video/x-ms-asf
8387      17 text/html
8388      17 audio/x-musepack
8389      16 image/x-xbitmap
8390 </pre>
8391
8392 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
8393
8394 <pre>
8395   count MIME type
8396   ----- -----------------------
8397      31 text/plain
8398      31 image/png
8399      31 image/jpeg
8400      29 audio/mpeg
8401      28 application/ogg
8402      27 image/gif
8403      26 image/tiff
8404      26 audio/x-mp3
8405      23 audio/x-wav
8406      22 image/bmp
8407      21 audio/x-flac
8408      20 audio/x-mpegurl
8409      19 audio/x-mpeg
8410      18 video/x-ms-asf
8411      18 video/mpeg
8412      18 audio/x-scpls
8413      18 application/x-ogg
8414      17 audio/x-musepack
8415      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8416      16 video/x-msvideo
8417 </pre>
8418
8419 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
8420 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
8421 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
8422 issues.</p>
8423
8424 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
8425 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
8426
8427       </div>
8428       <div class="tags">
8429
8430
8431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8432
8433
8434       </div>
8435     </div>
8436     <div class="padding"></div>
8437
8438     <div class="entry">
8439       <div class="title">
8440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
8441       </div>
8442       <div class="date">
8443         15th January 2013
8444       </div>
8445       <div class="body">
8446         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
8447 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
8448 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
8449 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
8450 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
8451 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
8452 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
8453 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
8454 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
8455 packages.</p>
8456
8457 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
8458 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
8459 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
8460 modalias.</p>
8461
8462 <p><blockquote>
8463 Package: package-name
8464 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
8465 </blockquote></p>
8466
8467 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
8468 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
8469
8470 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
8471 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
8472
8473 <p><blockquote>
8474 Package: cheese
8475 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
8476 </blockquote></p>
8477
8478 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
8479 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
8480
8481 <p><blockquote>
8482 Package: pcmciautils
8483 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
8484 </blockquote></p>
8485
8486 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
8487 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
8488
8489 <p><blockquote>
8490 Package: colorhug-client
8491 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
8492 </blockquote></p>
8493
8494 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
8495 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
8496 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
8497
8498 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
8499 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
8500 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
8501 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
8502 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
8503 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
8504 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
8505 Raring.</p>
8506
8507 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
8508 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
8509 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
8510 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
8511 try the
8512 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
8513 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
8514 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
8515 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
8516
8517 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
8518 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
8519
8520 <p><blockquote>
8521 % ./hw-support-lookup
8522 <br>yubikey-personalization
8523 <br>%
8524 </blockquote></p>
8525
8526 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
8527 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
8528
8529 <p><blockquote>
8530 % ./hw-support-lookup
8531 <br>pcmciautils
8532 <br>%
8533 </blockquote></p>
8534
8535 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
8536 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
8537 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
8538
8539 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
8540 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
8541 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
8542 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
8543 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
8544 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
8545 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
8546 see if it work.</p>
8547
8548 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8549 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8550 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8551 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8552
8553       </div>
8554       <div class="tags">
8555
8556
8557         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8558
8559
8560       </div>
8561     </div>
8562     <div class="padding"></div>
8563
8564     <div class="entry">
8565       <div class="title">
8566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
8567       </div>
8568       <div class="date">
8569         14th January 2013
8570       </div>
8571       <div class="body">
8572         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
8573 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
8574 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
8575 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
8576 in
8577 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8578 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
8579
8580 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
8581
8582 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
8583 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
8584 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
8585 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
8586 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
8587 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
8588
8589 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
8590 this shell script:</p>
8591
8592 <pre>
8593 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
8594 </pre>
8595
8596 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
8597 using modinfo:</p>
8598
8599 <pre>
8600 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
8601 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
8602 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
8603 %
8604 </pre>
8605
8606 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
8607
8608 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
8609 Bridge memory controller:</p>
8610
8611 <p><blockquote>
8612 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
8613 </blockquote></p>
8614
8615 <p>This represent these values:</p>
8616
8617 <pre>
8618  v   00008086  (vendor)
8619  d   00002770  (device)
8620  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
8621  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
8622  bc  06        (bus class)
8623  sc  00        (bus subclass)
8624  i   00        (interface)
8625 </pre>
8626
8627 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
8628 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
8629 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
8630 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
8631
8632 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
8633 means.</p>
8634
8635 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
8636
8637 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
8638 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
8639
8640 <p><blockquote>
8641 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
8642 </blockquote></p>
8643
8644 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
8645
8646 <pre>
8647  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
8648  p    0001  (device product)
8649  d    0206  (bcddevice)
8650  dc     09  (device class)
8651  dsc    00  (device subclass)
8652  dp     00  (device protocol)
8653  ic     09  (interface class)
8654  isc    00  (interface subclass)
8655  ip     00  (interface protocol)
8656 </pre>
8657
8658 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
8659 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
8660 these alias entries show up:</p>
8661
8662 <p><blockquote>
8663 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
8664 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
8665 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
8666 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
8667 </blockquote></p>
8668
8669 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
8670 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
8671 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
8672
8673 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
8674
8675 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
8676 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
8677
8678 <p><blockquote>
8679 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8680 </blockquote></p>
8681
8682 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
8683
8684 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
8685
8686 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
8687 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
8688 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
8689
8690 <p><blockquote>
8691 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
8692 </blockquote></p>
8693
8694 <p>The values present are</p>
8695
8696 <pre>
8697  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
8698  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
8699  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
8700  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
8701  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
8702  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
8703  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
8704  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
8705  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
8706  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
8707  ct   10             (chassis type)
8708  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
8709 </pre>
8710
8711 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
8712 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
8713
8714 <pre>
8715   3 Desktop
8716   4 Low Profile Desktop
8717   5 Pizza Box
8718   6 Mini Tower
8719   7 Tower
8720   8 Portable
8721   9 Laptop
8722  10 Notebook
8723  11 Hand Held
8724  12 Docking Station
8725  13 All In One
8726  14 Sub Notebook
8727  15 Space-saving
8728  16 Lunch Box
8729  17 Main Server Chassis
8730  18 Expansion Chassis
8731  19 Sub Chassis
8732  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
8733  21 Peripheral Chassis
8734  22 RAID Chassis
8735  23 Rack Mount Chassis
8736  24 Sealed-case PC
8737  25 Multi-system
8738  26 CompactPCI
8739  27 AdvancedTCA
8740  28 Blade
8741  29 Blade Enclosing
8742 </pre>
8743
8744 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
8745 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
8746 claim it is a desktop.</p>
8747
8748 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
8749
8750 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
8751 test machine:</p>
8752
8753 <p><blockquote>
8754 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
8755 </blockquote></p>
8756
8757 <p>The values present are</p>
8758
8759 <pre>
8760   ty  01  (type)
8761   pr  00  (prototype)
8762   id  00  (id)
8763   ex  00  (extra)
8764 </pre>
8765
8766 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
8767 the valid values are.</p>
8768
8769 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
8770
8771 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
8772 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
8773 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
8774 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
8775 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
8776 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
8777 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
8778
8779 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
8780
8781 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
8782 one can use the following shell script:</p>
8783
8784 <pre>
8785   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
8786     echo "$id" ; \
8787     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
8788   done
8789 </pre>
8790
8791 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
8792 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
8793
8794 <pre>
8795   acpi:ACPI0003:
8796     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
8797   acpi:device:
8798   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
8799   acpi:IBM0068:
8800     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
8801     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
8802     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
8803     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
8804   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8805     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
8806     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
8807     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
8808   [...]
8809 </pre>
8810
8811 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8812 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8813 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8814 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8815
8816 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
8817 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
8818 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
8819
8820       </div>
8821       <div class="tags">
8822
8823
8824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8825
8826
8827       </div>
8828     </div>
8829     <div class="padding"></div>
8830
8831     <div class="entry">
8832       <div class="title">
8833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
8834       </div>
8835       <div class="date">
8836         10th January 2013
8837       </div>
8838       <div class="body">
8839         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
8840 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
8841 Launcher and updated the Debian package
8842 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
8843 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
8844 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
8845 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
8846 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
8847 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
8848 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
8849 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
8850 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
8851 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
8852 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
8853 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
8854 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
8855 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
8856 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
8857
8858       </div>
8859       <div class="tags">
8860
8861
8862         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8863
8864
8865       </div>
8866     </div>
8867     <div class="padding"></div>
8868
8869     <div class="entry">
8870       <div class="title">
8871         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
8872       </div>
8873       <div class="date">
8874          9th January 2013
8875       </div>
8876       <div class="body">
8877         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
8878 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
8879 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
8880 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
8881 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
8882 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
8883 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
8884 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
8885 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
8886 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
8887 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
8888
8889 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
8890 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
8891 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
8892 simple:
8893
8894 <ul>
8895
8896 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
8897   starting when a user log in.</li>
8898
8899 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
8900   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
8901
8902 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
8903   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
8904   packages.</li>
8905
8906 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
8907   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
8908
8909 </ul>
8910
8911 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
8912 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
8913 discover database to find packages and
8914 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
8915 packages.</p>
8916
8917 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
8918 draft package is now checked into
8919 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8920 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
8921 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
8922 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
8923 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
8924 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
8925 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
8926 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
8927 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
8928 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
8929 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
8930 because of the freeze).</p>
8931
8932 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
8933 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
8934 inserted):</p>
8935
8936 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
8937
8938 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
8939 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
8940 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
8941
8942 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
8943 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
8944 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
8945 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
8946 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
8947 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
8948 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
8949
8950 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
8951 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
8952 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
8953 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
8954 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
8955 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
8956 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
8957 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
8958 not be installed?</p>
8959
8960 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
8961 please send me an email. :)</p>
8962
8963       </div>
8964       <div class="tags">
8965
8966
8967         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8968
8969
8970       </div>
8971     </div>
8972     <div class="padding"></div>
8973
8974     <div class="entry">
8975       <div class="title">
8976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
8977       </div>
8978       <div class="date">
8979          2nd January 2013
8980       </div>
8981       <div class="body">
8982         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
8983 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
8984 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
8985 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
8986 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
8987 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
8988 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
8989 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
8990 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
8991 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
8992
8993 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
8994 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
8995 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
8996
8997       </div>
8998       <div class="tags">
8999
9000
9001         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9002
9003
9004       </div>
9005     </div>
9006     <div class="padding"></div>
9007
9008     <div class="entry">
9009       <div class="title">
9010         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
9011       </div>
9012       <div class="date">
9013         25th December 2012
9014       </div>
9015       <div class="body">
9016         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
9017 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
9018
9019 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
9020 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
9021 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
9022 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
9023 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
9024 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
9025 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
9026 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
9027 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
9028 name.</p>
9029
9030 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
9031 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
9032 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
9033
9034 <blockquote><pre>
9035 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
9036 cd bitcoin
9037 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
9038 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
9039 </pre></blockquote>
9040
9041 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
9042 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
9043 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
9044 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
9045 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
9046 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
9047 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
9048 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
9049 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
9050
9051 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9052 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9053 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9054
9055       </div>
9056       <div class="tags">
9057
9058
9059         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9060
9061
9062       </div>
9063     </div>
9064     <div class="padding"></div>
9065
9066     <div class="entry">
9067       <div class="title">
9068         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
9069       </div>
9070       <div class="date">
9071         21st December 2012
9072       </div>
9073       <div class="body">
9074         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
9075 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
9076 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
9077 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
9078 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
9079 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
9080 is now maintained by a
9081 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
9082 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
9083 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
9084 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
9085 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
9086 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
9087 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
9088 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
9089 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
9090 Corallo in a
9091 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
9092 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
9093 Debian package.</p>
9094
9095 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
9096 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
9097 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
9098 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
9099 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
9100 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
9101 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
9102 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
9103 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
9104 new version to unstable.
9105
9106 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
9107 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
9108 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
9109 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
9110 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
9111 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
9112 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
9113 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
9114 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
9115 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
9116 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
9117 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
9118 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
9119 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
9120 have not tested them.</p>
9121
9122 <p>My
9123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
9124 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
9125 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
9126 years ago, as can be
9127 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
9128 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
9129 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
9130 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
9131 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
9132 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
9133 the same address as last time,
9134 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9135
9136       </div>
9137       <div class="tags">
9138
9139
9140         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9141
9142
9143       </div>
9144     </div>
9145     <div class="padding"></div>
9146
9147     <div class="entry">
9148       <div class="title">
9149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
9150       </div>
9151       <div class="date">
9152          7th September 2012
9153       </div>
9154       <div class="body">
9155         <p>As I
9156 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
9157 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
9158 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
9159 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
9160 repository for the project</a>.</p>
9161
9162 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
9163 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
9164 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
9165 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
9166
9167 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
9168 PostScript formats at
9169 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
9170 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
9171
9172       </div>
9173       <div class="tags">
9174
9175
9176         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
9177
9178
9179       </div>
9180     </div>
9181     <div class="padding"></div>
9182
9183     <div class="entry">
9184       <div class="title">
9185         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
9186       </div>
9187       <div class="date">
9188         16th August 2012
9189       </div>
9190       <div class="body">
9191         <p>I dag fyller
9192 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
9193 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
9194 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
9195
9196       </div>
9197       <div class="tags">
9198
9199
9200         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9201
9202
9203       </div>
9204     </div>
9205     <div class="padding"></div>
9206
9207     <div class="entry">
9208       <div class="title">
9209         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
9210       </div>
9211       <div class="date">
9212         24th June 2012
9213       </div>
9214       <div class="body">
9215         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
9216 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
9217 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
9218 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
9219 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
9220 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
9221 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
9222 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
9223 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
9224 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
9225 missing in my book.</p>
9226
9227 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
9228 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
9229 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
9230 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
9231 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
9232 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
9233 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
9234
9235       </div>
9236       <div class="tags">
9237
9238
9239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
9240
9241
9242       </div>
9243     </div>
9244     <div class="padding"></div>
9245
9246     <div class="entry">
9247       <div class="title">
9248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
9249       </div>
9250       <div class="date">
9251         21st November 2011
9252       </div>
9253       <div class="body">
9254         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
9255 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
9256 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
9257 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
9258 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
9259 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
9260 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
9261 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
9262 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
9263 the tools to do so.</p>
9264
9265 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
9266 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
9267 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
9268 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
9269
9270 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
9271 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
9272 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
9273 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
9274 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
9275 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
9276 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
9277 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
9278
9279 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
9280 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
9281 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
9282
9283 <p><pre>
9284 #!/usr/bin/perl
9285 use strict;
9286 use warnings;
9287 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
9288 BEGIN {
9289     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
9290     my %rhelmodules = (
9291         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
9292         );
9293     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
9294         eval "use $module;";
9295         if ($@) {
9296             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
9297             system("yum install -y $pkg");
9298             eval "use $module;";
9299         }
9300     }
9301 }
9302 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
9303
9304 upgrade_dell();
9305
9306 exit 0;
9307
9308 sub run_firmware_script {
9309     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
9310     unless ($script) {
9311         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
9312         exit 1
9313     }
9314     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
9315
9316     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
9317         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
9318     } else {
9319         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
9320     }
9321 }
9322
9323 sub run_firmware_scripts {
9324     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
9325     # Run firmware packages
9326     for my $dir (@dirs) {
9327         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
9328         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
9329         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
9330             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
9331             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
9332         }
9333         closedir $dh;
9334     }
9335 }
9336
9337 sub download {
9338     my $url = shift;
9339     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
9340     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
9341 }
9342
9343 sub upgrade_dell {
9344     my @dirs;
9345     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9346     chomp $product;
9347
9348     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
9349
9350         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
9351         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
9352
9353         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
9354             CLEANUP => 1
9355             );
9356         chdir($tmpdir);
9357         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
9358         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
9359         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
9360         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
9361         my $fwopts = "-q";
9362         if (@paths) {
9363             for my $url (@paths) {
9364                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
9365             }
9366             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
9367         } else {
9368             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9369             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9370         }
9371         chdir('/');
9372     } else {
9373         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9374         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9375     }
9376 }
9377
9378 sub fetch_dell_fw {
9379     my $path = shift;
9380     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
9381     download($url);
9382 }
9383
9384 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
9385 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
9386 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
9387 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
9388     my $filename = shift;
9389
9390     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9391     chomp $product;
9392     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
9393
9394     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
9395
9396     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
9397     my @paths;
9398     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
9399         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
9400         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
9401         my $oscode;
9402         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
9403             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
9404         } else {
9405             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
9406         }
9407         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
9408         {
9409             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
9410         }
9411     }
9412     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
9413         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
9414
9415         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
9416         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
9417
9418         my $cpath = $component->{path};
9419         for my $path (@paths) {
9420             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
9421                 push(@paths, $cpath);
9422             }
9423         }
9424     }
9425     return @paths;
9426 }
9427 </pre>
9428
9429 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
9430 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
9431 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
9432 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
9433 outdated.</p>
9434
9435       </div>
9436       <div class="tags">
9437
9438
9439         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9440
9441
9442       </div>
9443     </div>
9444     <div class="padding"></div>
9445
9446     <div class="entry">
9447       <div class="title">
9448         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
9449       </div>
9450       <div class="date">
9451          4th August 2011
9452       </div>
9453       <div class="body">
9454         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
9455 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
9456 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
9457 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
9458 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
9459 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
9460 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
9461 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
9462 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
9463
9464 <p><blockquote>
9465 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
9466 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
9467 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
9468 </blockquote></p>
9469
9470 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
9471 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
9472 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
9473 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
9474 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
9475 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
9476 hard to explain.</p>
9477
9478 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
9479 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
9480 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
9481 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
9482 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
9483 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
9484 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
9485 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
9486 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
9487 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
9488 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
9489 mode).</p>
9490
9491 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
9492 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
9493 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
9494 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
9495 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
9496 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
9497 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
9498 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
9499 after visiting single user mode.</p>
9500
9501 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
9502 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
9503 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
9504 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
9505 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
9506 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
9507 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
9508 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
9509
9510 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
9511 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
9512 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
9513
9514       </div>
9515       <div class="tags">
9516
9517
9518         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9519
9520
9521       </div>
9522     </div>
9523     <div class="padding"></div>
9524
9525     <div class="entry">
9526       <div class="title">
9527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
9528       </div>
9529       <div class="date">
9530         30th July 2011
9531       </div>
9532       <div class="body">
9533         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
9534 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
9535 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
9536 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
9537 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
9538 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
9539 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
9540 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
9541 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
9542 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
9543 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
9544 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
9545 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
9546
9547 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
9548 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
9549 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
9550 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
9551 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
9552 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
9553 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
9554 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
9555 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
9556
9557 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
9558 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
9559 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
9560 is presented.</p>
9561
9562 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
9563 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
9564 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
9565 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
9566 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
9567 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
9568 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
9569 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
9570 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
9571 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
9572 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
9573 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
9574 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
9575 find time to push this forward.</p>
9576
9577       </div>
9578       <div class="tags">
9579
9580
9581         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9582
9583
9584       </div>
9585     </div>
9586     <div class="padding"></div>
9587
9588     <div class="entry">
9589       <div class="title">
9590         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
9591       </div>
9592       <div class="date">
9593         29th July 2011
9594       </div>
9595       <div class="body">
9596         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
9597 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
9598 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
9599 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
9600 issues.</p>
9601
9602 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
9603 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
9604 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
9605
9606 <ol>
9607
9608 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
9609 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
9610 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
9611 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
9612 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
9613 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
9614 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
9615 Debian.</li>
9616
9617 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
9618 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
9619 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
9620 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
9621 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
9622 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
9623 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
9624 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
9625 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
9626 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
9627 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
9628 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
9629 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
9630
9631 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
9632 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
9633 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
9634 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
9635 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
9636 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
9637 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
9638 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
9639 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
9640 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
9641
9642 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
9643 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
9644 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
9645 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
9646 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
9647 latter behaviour.</li>
9648
9649 </ol>
9650
9651 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
9652 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
9653 it do not matter much.</p>
9654
9655 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
9656 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
9657 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
9658
9659       </div>
9660       <div class="tags">
9661
9662
9663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9664
9665
9666       </div>
9667     </div>
9668     <div class="padding"></div>
9669
9670     <div class="entry">
9671       <div class="title">
9672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
9673       </div>
9674       <div class="date">
9675         26th July 2011
9676       </div>
9677       <div class="body">
9678         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
9679 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
9680 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
9681 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
9682 security support for a few years.</p>
9683
9684 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
9685 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
9686 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
9687 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
9688 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
9689 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
9690 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
9691 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
9692 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
9693 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
9694 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
9695 easier in the future.</p>
9696
9697 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
9698 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
9699 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
9700 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
9701 do not have time for.</p>
9702
9703       </div>
9704       <div class="tags">
9705
9706
9707         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
9708
9709
9710       </div>
9711     </div>
9712     <div class="padding"></div>
9713
9714     <div class="entry">
9715       <div class="title">
9716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
9717       </div>
9718       <div class="date">
9719          3rd April 2011
9720       </div>
9721       <div class="body">
9722         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
9723 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
9724 update in English.</p>
9725
9726 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
9727 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
9728 of the British service
9729 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
9730 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
9731 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
9732 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
9733 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
9734 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
9735 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
9736 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
9737 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
9738 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
9739 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
9740 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
9741 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
9742
9743 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
9744 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
9745 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
9746 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
9747 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
9748 public infrastructure.</p>
9749
9750 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
9751 such service?</p>
9752
9753       </div>
9754       <div class="tags">
9755
9756
9757         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
9758
9759
9760       </div>
9761     </div>
9762     <div class="padding"></div>
9763
9764     <div class="entry">
9765       <div class="title">
9766         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
9767       </div>
9768       <div class="date">
9769         28th January 2011
9770       </div>
9771       <div class="body">
9772         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
9773 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
9774 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
9775 available on the Internet, and check our locally
9776 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
9777 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
9778 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
9779 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
9780 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
9781 out which security holes were present in our free software
9782 collection.</p>
9783
9784 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
9785 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
9786 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
9787 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
9788 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
9789 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
9790 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
9791 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
9792 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
9793 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
9794 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
9795 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
9796 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
9797 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
9798 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
9799 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
9800
9801 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
9802 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
9803 check out, one could look up
9804 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
9805 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
9806 The most recent one is
9807 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
9808 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
9809 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
9810
9811 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
9812 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
9813 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
9814 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
9815 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
9816 security issues out.</p>
9817
9818 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
9819 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
9820 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
9821 RHEL is providing
9822 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
9823 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
9824 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
9825
9826 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
9827 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
9828 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
9829 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
9830 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
9831 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
9832 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
9833 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
9834 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
9835 established soon.</p>
9836
9837 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
9838 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
9839 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
9840 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
9841 for their packages.</p>
9842
9843       </div>
9844       <div class="tags">
9845
9846
9847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9848
9849
9850       </div>
9851     </div>
9852     <div class="padding"></div>
9853
9854     <div class="entry">
9855       <div class="title">
9856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
9857       </div>
9858       <div class="date">
9859         23rd January 2011
9860       </div>
9861       <div class="body">
9862         <p>In the
9863 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
9864 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
9865 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
9866 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
9867 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
9868 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
9869 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
9870 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
9871 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
9872 one of my machines like this:</p>
9873
9874 <pre>
9875 loaded modules:
9876 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
9877 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
9878 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
9879 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
9880 10de:03ec pata_amd
9881 10de:03f6 sata_nv
9882 1022:1103 k8temp
9883 109e:036e bttv
9884 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
9885 11ab:4364 sky2
9886 </pre>
9887
9888 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
9889 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
9890
9891 <pre>
9892 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
9893     echo loaded pci modules:
9894     (
9895         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
9896         for address in * ; do
9897             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
9898                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
9899                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
9900                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
9901                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
9902                     echo "$id $module"
9903                 fi
9904             fi
9905         done
9906     )
9907     echo
9908 fi
9909 </pre>
9910
9911 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
9912 mappings:</p>
9913
9914 <pre>
9915 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
9916     echo loaded usb modules:
9917     (
9918         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
9919         for address in * ; do
9920             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
9921                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
9922                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
9923                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
9924                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
9925                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
9926                         echo "$id $module"
9927                     fi
9928                 fi
9929             fi
9930         done
9931     )
9932     echo
9933 fi
9934 </pre>
9935
9936 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
9937 well.</p>
9938
9939       </div>
9940       <div class="tags">
9941
9942
9943         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9944
9945
9946       </div>
9947     </div>
9948     <div class="padding"></div>
9949
9950     <div class="entry">
9951       <div class="title">
9952         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
9953       </div>
9954       <div class="date">
9955         22nd December 2010
9956       </div>
9957       <div class="body">
9958         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
9959 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
9960 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
9961 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
9962 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
9963 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
9964 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
9965 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
9966 university.</p>
9967
9968 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
9969 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
9970 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
9971 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
9972 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
9973 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
9974 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
9975 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
9976
9977 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
9978 I perform on a new model.</p>
9979
9980 <ul>
9981
9982 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
9983 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
9984 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
9985
9986 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
9987 installation, X.org is working.</li>
9988
9989 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
9990 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
9991 reported by the program.</li>
9992
9993 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
9994 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
9995 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
9996 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
9997 normally test this by playing
9998 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
9999 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
10000
10001 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
10002 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
10003
10004 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
10005 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
10006
10007 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
10008 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
10009
10010 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
10011 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
10012 few.</li>
10013
10014 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
10015 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
10016 notice this.</li>
10017
10018 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
10019 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
10020 resume.</li>
10021
10022 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
10023 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
10024 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
10025 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
10026 not.</li>
10027
10028 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
10029 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
10030 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
10031 existence.</li>
10032
10033 </ul>
10034
10035 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
10036 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
10037 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
10038 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
10039 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
10040 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
10041 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
10042 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
10043
10044       </div>
10045       <div class="tags">
10046
10047
10048         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10049
10050
10051       </div>
10052     </div>
10053     <div class="padding"></div>
10054
10055     <div class="entry">
10056       <div class="title">
10057         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
10058       </div>
10059       <div class="date">
10060         11th December 2010
10061       </div>
10062       <div class="body">
10063         <p>As I continue to explore
10064 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
10065 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
10066 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
10067
10068 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
10069 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
10070 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
10071 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
10072 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
10073 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
10074 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
10075 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
10076 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
10077 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
10078 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
10079 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
10080 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
10081 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
10082 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
10083 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
10084 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
10085 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
10086 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
10087 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
10088
10089 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
10090 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
10091 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
10092 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
10093 If the Skolelinux foundation
10094 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
10095 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
10096 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
10097 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
10098 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
10099 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
10100 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
10101 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
10102
10103 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
10104 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
10105 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
10106 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
10107 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
10108 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
10109 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
10110 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
10111 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
10112 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
10113 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
10114 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
10115 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
10116 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
10117 currencies.</p>
10118
10119 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
10120 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
10121 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
10122 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
10123 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
10124 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
10125 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
10126 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
10127 BitCoins.  Check out
10128 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
10129 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
10130 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
10131 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
10132 yet.</p>
10133
10134 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
10135 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
10136 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
10137 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
10138 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
10139
10140       </div>
10141       <div class="tags">
10142
10143
10144         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10145
10146
10147       </div>
10148     </div>
10149     <div class="padding"></div>
10150
10151     <div class="entry">
10152       <div class="title">
10153         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
10154       </div>
10155       <div class="date">
10156         10th December 2010
10157       </div>
10158       <div class="body">
10159         <p>With this weeks lawless
10160 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
10161 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
10162 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
10163 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
10164 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
10165 A blog post from
10166 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
10167 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
10168 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
10169 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
10170 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
10171 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
10172 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
10173
10174 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
10175 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
10176 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
10177 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
10178 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
10179 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
10180 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
10181 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
10182 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
10183 Debian</a> soon.</p>
10184
10185 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
10186 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
10187 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
10188 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
10189 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
10190 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
10191 you can even get
10192 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
10193 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
10194 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
10195 on the current exchange rates.</p>
10196
10197 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
10198 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
10199 donations to the address
10200 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
10201
10202       </div>
10203       <div class="tags">
10204
10205
10206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10207
10208
10209       </div>
10210     </div>
10211     <div class="padding"></div>
10212
10213     <div class="entry">
10214       <div class="title">
10215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
10216       </div>
10217       <div class="date">
10218         27th November 2010
10219       </div>
10220       <div class="body">
10221         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
10222 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
10223 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
10224 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
10225 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
10226 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
10227 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
10228 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
10229
10230 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
10231 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
10232 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
10233 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
10234 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
10235 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
10236 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
10237 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
10238 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
10239 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
10240 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
10241
10242 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
10243 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
10244 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
10245 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
10246 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
10247 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
10248 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
10249 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
10250 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
10251 what is going on.</p>
10252
10253       </div>
10254       <div class="tags">
10255
10256
10257         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10258
10259
10260       </div>
10261     </div>
10262     <div class="padding"></div>
10263
10264     <div class="entry">
10265       <div class="title">
10266         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
10267       </div>
10268       <div class="date">
10269         22nd November 2010
10270       </div>
10271       <div class="body">
10272         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
10273 upgrade testing of the
10274 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
10275 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
10276 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
10277 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
10278
10279 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
10280
10281 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10282
10283 <blockquote><p>
10284   apache2.2-bin
10285   aptdaemon
10286   baobab
10287   binfmt-support
10288   browser-plugin-gnash
10289   cheese-common
10290   cli-common
10291   cups-pk-helper
10292   dmz-cursor-theme
10293   empathy
10294   empathy-common
10295   freedesktop-sound-theme
10296   freeglut3
10297   gconf-defaults-service
10298   gdm-themes
10299   gedit-plugins
10300   geoclue
10301   geoclue-hostip
10302   geoclue-localnet
10303   geoclue-manual
10304   geoclue-yahoo
10305   gnash
10306   gnash-common
10307   gnome
10308   gnome-backgrounds
10309   gnome-cards-data
10310   gnome-codec-install
10311   gnome-core
10312   gnome-desktop-environment
10313   gnome-disk-utility
10314   gnome-screenshot
10315   gnome-search-tool
10316   gnome-session-canberra
10317   gnome-system-log
10318   gnome-themes-extras
10319   gnome-themes-more
10320   gnome-user-share
10321   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10322   gstreamer0.10-tools
10323   gtk2-engines
10324   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10325   gtk2-engines-smooth
10326   hamster-applet
10327   libapache2-mod-dnssd
10328   libapr1
10329   libaprutil1
10330   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
10331   libaprutil1-ldap
10332   libart2.0-cil
10333   libboost-date-time1.42.0
10334   libboost-python1.42.0
10335   libboost-thread1.42.0
10336   libchamplain-0.4-0
10337   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
10338   libcheese-gtk18
10339   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10340   libcryptui0
10341   libdiscid0
10342   libelf1
10343   libepc-1.0-2
10344   libepc-common
10345   libepc-ui-1.0-2
10346   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10347   libfreerdp0
10348   libgconf2.0-cil
10349   libgdata-common
10350   libgdata7
10351   libgdu-gtk0
10352   libgee2
10353   libgeoclue0
10354   libgexiv2-0
10355   libgif4
10356   libglade2.0-cil
10357   libglib2.0-cil
10358   libgmime2.4-cil
10359   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10360   libgnome2.24-cil
10361   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
10362   libgpod-common
10363   libgpod4
10364   libgtk2.0-cil
10365   libgtkglext1
10366   libgtksourceview2.0-common
10367   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10368   libmono-addins0.2-cil
10369   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
10370   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10371   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
10372   libmono-posix2.0-cil
10373   libmono-security2.0-cil
10374   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10375   libmono-system2.0-cil
10376   libmtp8
10377   libmusicbrainz3-6
10378   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
10379   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
10380   libopal3.6.8
10381   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
10382   libpt2.6.7
10383   libpython2.6
10384   librpm1
10385   librpmio1
10386   libsdl1.2debian
10387   libsrtp0
10388   libssh-4
10389   libtelepathy-farsight0
10390   libtelepathy-glib0
10391   libtidy-0.99-0
10392   media-player-info
10393   mesa-utils
10394   mono-2.0-gac
10395   mono-gac
10396   mono-runtime
10397   nautilus-sendto
10398   nautilus-sendto-empathy
10399   p7zip-full
10400   pkg-config
10401   python-aptdaemon
10402   python-aptdaemon-gtk
10403   python-axiom
10404   python-beautifulsoup
10405   python-bugbuddy
10406   python-clientform
10407   python-coherence
10408   python-configobj
10409   python-crypto
10410   python-cupshelpers
10411   python-elementtree
10412   python-epsilon
10413   python-evolution
10414   python-feedparser
10415   python-gdata
10416   python-gdbm
10417   python-gst0.10
10418   python-gtkglext1
10419   python-gtksourceview2
10420   python-httplib2
10421   python-louie
10422   python-mako
10423   python-markupsafe
10424   python-mechanize
10425   python-nevow
10426   python-notify
10427   python-opengl
10428   python-openssl
10429   python-pam
10430   python-pkg-resources
10431   python-pyasn1
10432   python-pysqlite2
10433   python-rdflib
10434   python-serial
10435   python-tagpy
10436   python-twisted-bin
10437   python-twisted-conch
10438   python-twisted-core
10439   python-twisted-web
10440   python-utidylib
10441   python-webkit
10442   python-xdg
10443   python-zope.interface
10444   remmina
10445   remmina-plugin-data
10446   remmina-plugin-rdp
10447   remmina-plugin-vnc
10448   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10449   rhythmbox-plugins
10450   rpm-common
10451   rpm2cpio
10452   seahorse-plugins
10453   shotwell
10454   software-center
10455   system-config-printer-udev
10456   telepathy-gabble
10457   telepathy-mission-control-5
10458   telepathy-salut
10459   tomboy
10460   totem
10461   totem-coherence
10462   totem-mozilla
10463   totem-plugins
10464   transmission-common
10465   xdg-user-dirs
10466   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
10467   xserver-xephyr
10468 </p></blockquote>
10469
10470 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10471
10472 <blockquote><p>
10473   cheese
10474   ekiga
10475   eog
10476   epiphany-extensions
10477   evolution-exchange
10478   fast-user-switch-applet
10479   file-roller
10480   gcalctool
10481   gconf-editor
10482   gdm
10483   gedit
10484   gedit-common
10485   gnome-games
10486   gnome-games-data
10487   gnome-nettool
10488   gnome-system-tools
10489   gnome-themes
10490   gnuchess
10491   gucharmap
10492   guile-1.8-libs
10493   libavahi-ui0
10494   libdmx1
10495   libgalago3
10496   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10497   libgtksourceview2.0-0
10498   liblircclient0
10499   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
10500   libspeexdsp1
10501   libsvga1
10502   rhythmbox
10503   seahorse
10504   sound-juicer
10505   system-config-printer
10506   totem-common
10507   transmission-gtk
10508   vinagre
10509   vino
10510 </p></blockquote>
10511
10512 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10513
10514 <blockquote><p>
10515   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10516 </p></blockquote>
10517
10518 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10519
10520 <blockquote><p>
10521 [nothing]
10522 </p></blockquote>
10523
10524 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
10525
10526 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10527
10528 <blockquote><p>
10529   ksmserver
10530 </p></blockquote>
10531
10532 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10533
10534 <blockquote><p>
10535   kwin
10536   network-manager-kde
10537 </p></blockquote>
10538
10539 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10540
10541 <blockquote><p>
10542   arts
10543   dolphin
10544   freespacenotifier
10545   google-gadgets-gst
10546   google-gadgets-xul
10547   kappfinder
10548   kcalc
10549   kcharselect
10550   kde-core
10551   kde-plasma-desktop
10552   kde-standard
10553   kde-window-manager
10554   kdeartwork
10555   kdeartwork-emoticons
10556   kdeartwork-style
10557   kdeartwork-theme-icon
10558   kdebase
10559   kdebase-apps
10560   kdebase-workspace
10561   kdebase-workspace-bin
10562   kdebase-workspace-data
10563   kdeeject
10564   kdelibs
10565   kdeplasma-addons
10566   kdeutils
10567   kdewallpapers
10568   kdf
10569   kfloppy
10570   kgpg
10571   khelpcenter4
10572   kinfocenter
10573   konq-plugins-l10n
10574   konqueror-nsplugins
10575   kscreensaver
10576   kscreensaver-xsavers
10577   ktimer
10578   kwrite
10579   libgle3
10580   libkde4-ruby1.8
10581   libkonq5
10582   libkonq5-templates
10583   libnetpbm10
10584   libplasma-ruby
10585   libplasma-ruby1.8
10586   libqt4-ruby1.8
10587   marble-data
10588   marble-plugins
10589   netpbm
10590   nuvola-icon-theme
10591   plasma-dataengines-workspace
10592   plasma-desktop
10593   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
10594   plasma-runners-addons
10595   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
10596   plasma-scriptengine-python
10597   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
10598   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
10599   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
10600   plasma-scriptengines
10601   plasma-wallpapers-addons
10602   plasma-widget-folderview
10603   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10604   ruby
10605   sweeper
10606   update-notifier-kde
10607   xscreensaver-data-extra
10608   xscreensaver-gl
10609   xscreensaver-gl-extra
10610   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10611 </p></blockquote>
10612
10613 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10614
10615 <blockquote><p>
10616   ark
10617   google-gadgets-common
10618   google-gadgets-qt
10619   htdig
10620   kate
10621   kdebase-bin
10622   kdebase-data
10623   kdepasswd
10624   kfind
10625   klipper
10626   konq-plugins
10627   konqueror
10628   ksysguard
10629   ksysguardd
10630   libarchive1
10631   libcln6
10632   libeet1
10633   libeina-svn-06
10634   libggadget-1.0-0b
10635   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
10636   libgps19
10637   libkdecorations4
10638   libkephal4
10639   libkonq4
10640   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
10641   libkscreensaver5
10642   libksgrd4
10643   libksignalplotter4
10644   libkunitconversion4
10645   libkwineffects1a
10646   libmarblewidget4
10647   libntrack-qt4-1
10648   libntrack0
10649   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
10650   libplasmaclock4a
10651   libplasmagenericshell4
10652   libprocesscore4a
10653   libprocessui4a
10654   libqalculate5
10655   libqedje0a
10656   libqtruby4shared2
10657   libqzion0a
10658   libruby1.8
10659   libscim8c2a
10660   libsmokekdecore4-3
10661   libsmokekdeui4-3
10662   libsmokekfile3
10663   libsmokekhtml3
10664   libsmokekio3
10665   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
10666   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
10667   libsmokekparts3
10668   libsmokektexteditor3
10669   libsmokekutils3
10670   libsmokenepomuk3
10671   libsmokephonon3
10672   libsmokeplasma3
10673   libsmokeqtcore4-3
10674   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
10675   libsmokeqtgui4-3
10676   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
10677   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
10678   libsmokeqtscript4-3
10679   libsmokeqtsql4-3
10680   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
10681   libsmokeqttest4-3
10682   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
10683   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
10684   libsmokeqtxml4-3
10685   libsmokesolid3
10686   libsmokesoprano3
10687   libtaskmanager4a
10688   libtidy-0.99-0
10689   libweather-ion4a
10690   libxklavier16
10691   libxxf86misc1
10692   okteta
10693   oxygencursors
10694   plasma-dataengines-addons
10695   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
10696   plasma-widget-lancelot
10697   plasma-widgets-addons
10698   plasma-widgets-workspace
10699   polkit-kde-1
10700   ruby1.8
10701   systemsettings
10702   update-notifier-common
10703 </p></blockquote>
10704
10705 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
10706 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
10707 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
10708 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
10709
10710       </div>
10711       <div class="tags">
10712
10713
10714         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10715
10716
10717       </div>
10718     </div>
10719     <div class="padding"></div>
10720
10721     <div class="entry">
10722       <div class="title">
10723         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
10724       </div>
10725       <div class="date">
10726         22nd November 2010
10727       </div>
10728       <div class="body">
10729         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
10730 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
10731 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
10732 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
10733 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
10734 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
10735 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
10736 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
10737 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
10738
10739 <p>I found
10740 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
10741 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
10742 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
10743 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
10744 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
10745 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
10746
10747 <pre>
10748 #!/bin/sh
10749
10750 # Based on
10751 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
10752
10753 set -e
10754 set -x
10755
10756 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
10757     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
10758     exit 1
10759 else
10760     host="$1"
10761 fi
10762
10763 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
10764     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
10765     exit 1
10766 fi
10767
10768 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
10769 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
10770 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
10771 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
10772
10773 img=$host.img
10774 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
10775 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
10776
10777 parted $img mklabel msdos
10778 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
10779 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
10780 parted $img set 1 boot on
10781
10782 modprobe dm-mod
10783 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
10784 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
10785
10786 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
10787 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
10788 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
10789
10790 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
10791 losetup -d /dev/loop0
10792 </pre>
10793
10794 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
10795 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
10796
10797 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
10798 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
10799 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
10800 seem to work just fine.</p>
10801
10802       </div>
10803       <div class="tags">
10804
10805
10806         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10807
10808
10809       </div>
10810     </div>
10811     <div class="padding"></div>
10812
10813     <div class="entry">
10814       <div class="title">
10815         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
10816       </div>
10817       <div class="date">
10818         20th November 2010
10819       </div>
10820       <div class="body">
10821         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
10822 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
10823 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
10824 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
10825
10826 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
10827 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
10828 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
10829
10830 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
10831
10832 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10833
10834 <blockquote><p>
10835   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
10836   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
10837   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
10838   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
10839   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
10840   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
10841   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
10842   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
10843   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
10844   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
10845   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10846   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10847   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
10848   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
10849   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
10850   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
10851   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10852   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
10853   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10854   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
10855   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
10856   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10857   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
10858   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
10859   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
10860   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10861   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10862   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
10863   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10864   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
10865   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
10866   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10867   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
10868   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
10869   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
10870   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
10871   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
10872   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
10873   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
10874   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
10875   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
10876   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
10877   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
10878   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
10879   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
10880   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
10881   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
10882   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
10883   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
10884   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
10885   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
10886   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
10887   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10888   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
10889   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
10890   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
10891   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
10892   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
10893   zip
10894 </p></blockquote>
10895
10896 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
10897
10898 <blockquote><p>
10899   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
10900   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
10901   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
10902   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
10903   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
10904   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
10905   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
10906   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
10907   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
10908   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
10909   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
10910   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10911   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10912   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10913   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10914   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
10915   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10916   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
10917   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
10918   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
10919   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
10920   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
10921   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10922   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
10923   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
10924   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
10925   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
10926   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
10927   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
10928 </p></blockquote>
10929
10930 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10931
10932 <blockquote><p>
10933   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10934 </p></blockquote>
10935
10936 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10937
10938 <blockquote><p>
10939 [nothing]
10940 </p></blockquote>
10941
10942 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
10943
10944 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10945
10946 <blockquote><p>
10947   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
10948   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10949   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
10950   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
10951   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
10952   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
10953   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10954   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
10955   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
10956   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10957   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
10958   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
10959   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
10960   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
10961   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
10962   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
10963   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
10964   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
10965   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
10966   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
10967   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
10968   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
10969   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
10970   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
10971   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
10972   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
10973   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
10974   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
10975   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
10976   ttf-sazanami-gothic
10977 </p></blockquote>
10978
10979 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10980
10981 <blockquote><p>
10982   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
10983   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
10984   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
10985   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
10986   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
10987   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
10988   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
10989   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
10990   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
10991   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
10992   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
10993   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
10994   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
10995   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
10996   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10997   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10998   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
10999   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
11000   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11001   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
11002   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
11003   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
11004   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11005   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11006   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
11007   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
11008   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
11009   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
11010   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
11011   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
11012   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
11013   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
11014   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
11015 </p></blockquote>
11016
11017 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11018
11019 <blockquote><p>
11020   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
11021   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
11022   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
11023   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
11024   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
11025   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
11026   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
11027 </p></blockquote>
11028
11029 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11030
11031 <blockquote><p>
11032   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
11033 </p></blockquote>
11034
11035       </div>
11036       <div class="tags">
11037
11038
11039         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11040
11041
11042       </div>
11043     </div>
11044     <div class="padding"></div>
11045
11046     <div class="entry">
11047       <div class="title">
11048         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
11049       </div>
11050       <div class="date">
11051         20th November 2010
11052       </div>
11053       <div class="body">
11054         <p>Answering
11055 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
11056 call from the Gnash project</a> for
11057 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
11058 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
11059 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
11060 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
11061 releases out more often.</p>
11062
11063 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
11064 I have considered setting up a <a
11065 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
11066 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
11067 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
11068 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
11069 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
11070 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
11071 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
11072 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
11073 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
11074 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
11075 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
11076 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
11077
11078       </div>
11079       <div class="tags">
11080
11081
11082         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11083
11084
11085       </div>
11086     </div>
11087     <div class="padding"></div>
11088
11089     <div class="entry">
11090       <div class="title">
11091         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
11092       </div>
11093       <div class="date">
11094          9th November 2010
11095       </div>
11096       <div class="body">
11097         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
11098
11099 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
11100 3D linked in from
11101 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
11102 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
11103
11104       </div>
11105       <div class="tags">
11106
11107
11108         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11109
11110
11111       </div>
11112     </div>
11113     <div class="padding"></div>
11114
11115     <div class="entry">
11116       <div class="title">
11117         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
11118       </div>
11119       <div class="date">
11120         24th October 2010
11121       </div>
11122       <div class="body">
11123         <p>Some updates.</p>
11124
11125 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
11126 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
11127 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
11128 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
11129 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
11130 :)</p>
11131
11132 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
11133 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
11134 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
11135 It is called
11136 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
11137 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
11138 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
11139 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
11140 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
11141 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
11142
11143 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
11144 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
11145 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
11146 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
11147 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
11148 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
11149 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
11150 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
11151 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
11152 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
11153
11154       </div>
11155       <div class="tags">
11156
11157
11158         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
11159
11160
11161       </div>
11162     </div>
11163     <div class="padding"></div>
11164
11165     <div class="entry">
11166       <div class="title">
11167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
11168       </div>
11169       <div class="date">
11170          4th September 2010
11171       </div>
11172       <div class="body">
11173         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
11174 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
11175 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
11176 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
11177 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
11178 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
11179 installed.</p>
11180
11181 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
11182 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
11183 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
11184 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
11185 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
11186 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
11187 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
11188 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
11189 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
11190
11191 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
11192 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
11193 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
11194 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
11195 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
11196 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
11197 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
11198 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
11199 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
11200 pages they want to visit.</p>
11201
11202 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
11203 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
11204 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
11205 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
11206 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
11207 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
11208 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
11209 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
11210 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
11211 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
11212 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
11213
11214       </div>
11215       <div class="tags">
11216
11217
11218         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11219
11220
11221       </div>
11222     </div>
11223     <div class="padding"></div>
11224
11225     <div class="entry">
11226       <div class="title">
11227         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
11228       </div>
11229       <div class="date">
11230         27th July 2010
11231       </div>
11232       <div class="body">
11233         <p>I discovered this while doing
11234 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
11235 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
11236 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
11237 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
11238 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
11239
11240 <p>An example is from todays
11241 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
11242 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
11243 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
11244 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
11245 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
11246 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
11247 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
11248
11249 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
11250
11251 <blockquote><pre>
11252 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
11253  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
11254   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
11255 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
11256  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
11257 </pre></blockquote>
11258
11259 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
11260 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
11261 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
11262 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
11263 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
11264 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
11265 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
11266 of dependency loops.</p>
11267
11268 <p>Thanks to
11269 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
11270 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
11271 dependencies
11272 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
11273 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
11274
11275 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
11276 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
11277 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
11278 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
11279 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
11280 it.</p>
11281
11282       </div>
11283       <div class="tags">
11284
11285
11286         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11287
11288
11289       </div>
11290     </div>
11291     <div class="padding"></div>
11292
11293     <div class="entry">
11294       <div class="title">
11295         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
11296       </div>
11297       <div class="date">
11298         17th July 2010
11299       </div>
11300       <div class="body">
11301         <p>This is a
11302 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
11303 on my
11304 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
11305 work</a> on
11306 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
11307 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
11308
11309 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
11310 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
11311 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
11312 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
11313
11314 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
11315 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
11316 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
11317
11318 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
11319
11320 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
11321 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
11322 the web.
11323
11324 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
11325 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
11326 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
11327 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
11328 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
11329 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
11330
11331 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
11332 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
11333 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
11334 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
11335 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
11336 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
11337 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
11338 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
11339 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
11340 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
11341 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
11342 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
11343 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
11344 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
11345 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
11346 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
11347
11348 <blockquote><pre>
11349 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11350   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11351   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11352   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11353   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11354   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11355   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11356
11357 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11358   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11359   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
11360   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
11361   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
11362   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
11363 </pre></blockquote>
11364
11365 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
11366 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
11367 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
11368 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11369 also exist.</p>
11370
11371 <blockquote><pre>
11372 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11373 objectclass: top
11374 objectclass: dnsdomain
11375 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11376 dc: tjener
11377 arecord: 10.0.2.2
11378 associateddomain: tjener.intern
11379
11380 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11381 objectclass: top
11382 objectclass: dnsdomain2
11383 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11384 dc: 2
11385 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
11386 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
11387 </pre></blockquote>
11388
11389 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
11390 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
11391 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
11392 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
11393 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
11394 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
11395 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
11396 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
11397 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
11398 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
11399 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
11400 instead.</p>
11401
11402 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
11403 like this:</p>
11404
11405 <blockquote><pre>
11406 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11407   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11408   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11409   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11410   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11411   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11412
11413 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11414   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
11415 </pre></blockquote>
11416
11417 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
11418 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
11419 reverse lookups.</p>
11420
11421 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
11422 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
11423 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
11424 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
11425
11426 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
11427 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
11428 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
11429
11430 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
11431 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
11432 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
11433 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
11434 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
11435
11436 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
11437 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
11438 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
11439 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
11440 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
11441
11442 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
11443 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
11444 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
11445 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
11446 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
11447 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
11448
11449 <blockquote><pre>
11450 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
11451     SUP top
11452     AUXILIARY
11453     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
11454           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
11455           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
11456           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
11457           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
11458     ))
11459 </pre></blockquote>
11460
11461 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
11462 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
11463 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
11464 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
11465 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
11466 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
11467
11468 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
11469
11470 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
11471 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
11472 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
11473 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
11474 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
11475
11476 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
11477 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
11478 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
11479 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
11480
11481 <blockquote><pre>
11482 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
11483 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
11484 </pre></blockquote>
11485
11486 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
11487 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
11488 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
11489 search result is this entry:</p>
11490
11491 <blockquote><pre>
11492 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11493 cn: dhcp
11494 objectClass: top
11495 objectClass: dhcpServer
11496 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11497 </pre></blockquote>
11498
11499 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
11500 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
11501 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
11502 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
11503 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
11504 The search result is this entry:</p>
11505
11506 <blockquote><pre>
11507 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11508 cn: DHCP Config
11509 objectClass: top
11510 objectClass: dhcpService
11511 objectClass: dhcpOptions
11512 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11513 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
11514 dhcpStatements: authoritative
11515 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
11516 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
11517 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
11518 </pre></blockquote>
11519
11520 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
11521 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
11522 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
11523 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
11524 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
11525 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
11526 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
11527 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
11528 related computer objects.</p>
11529
11530 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
11531 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
11532 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
11533 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
11534 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
11535 like:</p>
11536
11537 <blockquote><pre>
11538 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11539 cn: hostname
11540 objectClass: top
11541 objectClass: dhcpHost
11542 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11543 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
11544 </pre></blockquote>
11545
11546 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
11547 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
11548 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
11549 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
11550 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
11551 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
11552 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
11553 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
11554 structural object class.
11555
11556 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11557
11558 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
11559 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
11560 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
11561 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
11562 in the configuration.</p>
11563
11564 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
11565 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
11566 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
11567 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
11568 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
11569 structure.</p>
11570
11571 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
11572 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
11573
11574 <blockquote><pre>
11575 ou=services
11576   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
11577     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
11578     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11579       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11580         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11581     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11582       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11583         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11584     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
11585       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
11586 </pre></blockquote>
11587
11588 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
11589 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
11590 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
11591 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
11592
11593 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
11594 like this:</p>
11595
11596 <blockquote><pre>
11597 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11598 dc: hostname
11599 objectClass: top
11600 objectClass: dhcpHost
11601 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11602 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
11603 associateddomain: hostname.intern
11604 arecord: 10.11.12.13
11605 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11606 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
11607 </pre></blockquote>
11608
11609 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
11610 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
11611 auxiliary object class.</p>
11612
11613       </div>
11614       <div class="tags">
11615
11616
11617         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11618
11619
11620       </div>
11621     </div>
11622     <div class="padding"></div>
11623
11624     <div class="entry">
11625       <div class="title">
11626         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
11627       </div>
11628       <div class="date">
11629         14th July 2010
11630       </div>
11631       <div class="body">
11632         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
11633 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
11634 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
11635 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
11636 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
11637
11638 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
11639 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
11640
11641 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
11642 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
11643 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
11644 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
11645 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
11646 to a slave DNS server.</p>
11647
11648 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
11649 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
11650 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
11651 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
11652 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
11653 seem to work.</p>
11654
11655 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
11656 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
11657 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
11658 this:</p>
11659
11660 <blockquote><pre>
11661   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11662   cn: hostname
11663   objectClass: dhcphost
11664   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11665   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
11666   associateddomain: hostname.intern
11667   arecord: 10.11.12.13
11668   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11669   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
11670   ldapconfigsound: Y
11671 </pre></blockquote>
11672
11673 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
11674 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
11675 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
11676 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
11677
11678 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
11679 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
11680 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
11681 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
11682 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
11683 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
11684 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
11685 might be a good place to put it.</p>
11686
11687 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11688 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11689
11690       </div>
11691       <div class="tags">
11692
11693
11694         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11695
11696
11697       </div>
11698     </div>
11699     <div class="padding"></div>
11700
11701     <div class="entry">
11702       <div class="title">
11703         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
11704       </div>
11705       <div class="date">
11706         11th July 2010
11707       </div>
11708       <div class="body">
11709         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
11710 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
11711 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
11712 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
11713
11714 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
11715 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
11716 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
11717 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
11718 LTSP clients.</p>
11719
11720 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
11721 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
11722 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
11723
11724 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
11725 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
11726 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
11727
11728 <blockquote><pre>
11729 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
11730 #
11731 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
11732 #
11733 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
11734 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
11735 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
11736 #
11737 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
11738 # existence of attribute names.
11739 #
11740 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
11741 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
11742 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
11743 #
11744 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
11745 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
11746 #
11747 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
11748 #     SUP top
11749 #     AUXILIARY
11750 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
11751
11752 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
11753 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
11754     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
11755     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
11756         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
11757         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
11758             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
11759             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
11760             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
11761             # bass value on to clients
11762             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
11763         done
11764     done
11765 fi
11766 </pre></blockquote>
11767
11768 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
11769 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
11770 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
11771 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
11772 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
11773
11774 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11775 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11776
11777 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
11778 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
11779 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
11780 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
11781 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
11782 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
11783
11784       </div>
11785       <div class="tags">
11786
11787
11788         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11789
11790
11791       </div>
11792     </div>
11793     <div class="padding"></div>
11794
11795     <div class="entry">
11796       <div class="title">
11797         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11798       </div>
11799       <div class="date">
11800          9th July 2010
11801       </div>
11802       <div class="body">
11803         <p>Since
11804 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
11805 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
11806 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
11807 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
11808 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
11809 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
11810 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
11811 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
11812 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
11813 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
11814 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
11815 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
11816 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
11817
11818       </div>
11819       <div class="tags">
11820
11821
11822         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11823
11824
11825       </div>
11826     </div>
11827     <div class="padding"></div>
11828
11829     <div class="entry">
11830       <div class="title">
11831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
11832       </div>
11833       <div class="date">
11834          3rd July 2010
11835       </div>
11836       <div class="body">
11837         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
11838 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
11839 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
11840 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
11841 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
11842 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
11843 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
11844 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
11845
11846 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
11847 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
11848 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
11849 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
11850 publish the difference.</p>
11851
11852 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11853
11854 <blockquote><p>
11855   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11856   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
11857   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
11858   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
11859   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
11860   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11861   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
11862   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
11863 </p></blockquote>
11864
11865 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11866
11867 <blockquote><p>
11868   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
11869   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
11870   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
11871   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
11872   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
11873   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
11874   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
11875   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
11876   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11877   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11878   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
11879   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
11880   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
11881   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
11882   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
11883   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
11884   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
11885   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
11886   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
11887   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
11888 </p></blockquote>
11889
11890 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11891
11892 <blockquote><p>
11893   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
11894   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
11895   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11896   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11897   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
11898   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
11899   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
11900   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11901   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11902   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11903   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11904   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
11905   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
11906   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
11907   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
11908   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
11909   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
11910   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
11911   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
11912   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
11913   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
11914 </p></blockquote>
11915
11916 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11917
11918 <blockquote><p>
11919   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
11920   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
11921   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
11922 </p></blockquote>
11923
11924 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
11925 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
11926 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
11927 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
11928 the difference somewhat.
11929
11930       </div>
11931       <div class="tags">
11932
11933
11934         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11935
11936
11937       </div>
11938     </div>
11939     <div class="padding"></div>
11940
11941     <div class="entry">
11942       <div class="title">
11943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11944       </div>
11945       <div class="date">
11946         28th June 2010
11947       </div>
11948       <div class="body">
11949         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
11950 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
11951 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
11952 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
11953 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
11954 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
11955 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
11956 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
11957 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
11958 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
11959
11960 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
11961 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
11962 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
11963 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
11964 released.</p>
11965
11966 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
11967 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
11968 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
11969 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
11970
11971 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
11972 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11973
11974 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
11975 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
11976 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
11977 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
11978 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
11979
11980       </div>
11981       <div class="tags">
11982
11983
11984         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11985
11986
11987       </div>
11988     </div>
11989     <div class="padding"></div>
11990
11991     <div class="entry">
11992       <div class="title">
11993         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
11994       </div>
11995       <div class="date">
11996         24th June 2010
11997       </div>
11998       <div class="body">
11999         <p>A while back, I
12000 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
12001 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
12002 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
12003 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
12004
12005 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
12006 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
12007 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
12008 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
12009
12010 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
12011 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
12012 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
12013 Debian Edu.</p>
12014
12015 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
12016 the
12017 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
12018 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
12019 available today from IETF.</p>
12020
12021 <pre>
12022 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
12023 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
12024 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
12025  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
12026         NAME 'dhcpHost'
12027         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
12028 -       SUP top
12029 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
12030         MUST cn
12031         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
12032         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
12033 </pre>
12034
12035 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
12036 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
12037 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
12038
12039 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12040 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12041
12042       </div>
12043       <div class="tags">
12044
12045
12046         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12047
12048
12049       </div>
12050     </div>
12051     <div class="padding"></div>
12052
12053     <div class="entry">
12054       <div class="title">
12055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
12056       </div>
12057       <div class="date">
12058         16th June 2010
12059       </div>
12060       <div class="body">
12061         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
12062 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
12063 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
12064 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
12065 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
12066 this:
12067
12068 <blockquote><pre>
12069 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12070 tasksel --new-install
12071 </pre></blockquote>
12072
12073 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
12074 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
12075 any output what so ever.
12076
12077 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
12078 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
12079 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
12080 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
12081 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
12082 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
12083 code like this:
12084
12085 <blockquote><pre>
12086 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12087 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
12088 $cmd
12089 </pre></blockquote>
12090
12091 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
12092 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
12093 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
12094 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
12095 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
12096 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
12097 installation.</p>
12098
12099 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
12100 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
12101 like this.</p>
12102
12103       </div>
12104       <div class="tags">
12105
12106
12107         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12108
12109
12110       </div>
12111     </div>
12112     <div class="padding"></div>
12113
12114     <div class="entry">
12115       <div class="title">
12116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
12117       </div>
12118       <div class="date">
12119         13th June 2010
12120       </div>
12121       <div class="body">
12122         <p>My
12123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
12124 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
12125 finally made the upgrade logs available from
12126 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
12127 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
12128 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
12129 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
12130
12131 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
12132 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
12133 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
12134 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
12135 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
12136 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
12137 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
12138 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
12139
12140 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
12141 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
12142 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
12143 too surprising.</p>
12144
12145 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
12146 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
12147 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
12148 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
12149 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
12150 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
12151 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
12152 continue.</p>
12153
12154 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
12155 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
12156   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
12157   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
12158   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
12159   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
12160   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
12161   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12162   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12163   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12164   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12165   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12166   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12167   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12168   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12169   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12170   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12171   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12172   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12173   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12174   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12175   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12176   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12177   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12178   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12179   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12180   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12181   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12182   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
12183   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
12184
12185 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
12186
12187 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
12188   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
12189   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
12190   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
12191   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12192   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
12193   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
12194   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
12195   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
12196   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
12197   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12198   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
12199   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12200   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
12201   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
12202   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
12203   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
12204   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
12205   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
12206   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
12207   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
12208   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
12209   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
12210   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
12211   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12212   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
12213   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
12214   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
12215   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
12216   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12217   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12218   zip</p>
12219
12220 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
12221
12222 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
12223   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
12224   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
12225   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
12226   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
12227   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
12228   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12229   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12230   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12231   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12232   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12233   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12234   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12235   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12236   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12237   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12238   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12239   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12240   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12241   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12242   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12243   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12244   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12245   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12246   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12247   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12248   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12249   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
12250
12251 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
12252 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
12253   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
12254   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
12255   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
12256   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
12257   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
12258   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
12259   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
12260   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
12261   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
12262   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
12263   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
12264   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
12265   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
12266   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
12267   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
12268   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
12269   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
12270   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12271   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
12272   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
12273   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
12274   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
12275   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
12276   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
12277   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
12278   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
12279   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
12280   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
12281   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
12282   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
12283   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
12284   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
12285   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
12286   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12287   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12288   xulrunner-1.9</p>
12289
12290
12291       </div>
12292       <div class="tags">
12293
12294
12295         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12296
12297
12298       </div>
12299     </div>
12300     <div class="padding"></div>
12301
12302     <div class="entry">
12303       <div class="title">
12304         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
12305       </div>
12306       <div class="date">
12307         11th June 2010
12308       </div>
12309       <div class="body">
12310         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
12311 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
12312 have been discovered and reported in the process
12313 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
12314 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
12315 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
12316 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
12317 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
12318
12319 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
12320 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
12321 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
12322 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
12323 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
12324 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
12325
12326 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
12327 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
12328 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12329 is created.  The bug report
12330 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
12331 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
12332 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
12333 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
12334 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
12335 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
12336 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
12337 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
12338 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
12339 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
12340 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
12341 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
12342 Debian Squeeze.</p>
12343
12344 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
12345 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
12346 trick:</p>
12347
12348 <blockquote><pre>
12349 #!/bin/sh
12350 set -ex
12351
12352 if [ "$1" ] ; then
12353     desktop=$1
12354 else
12355     desktop=gnome
12356 fi
12357
12358 from=lenny
12359 to=squeeze
12360
12361 exec &lt; /dev/null
12362 unset LANG
12363 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
12364 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
12365 fuser -mv .
12366 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
12367 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12368 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
12369 #!/bin/sh
12370 exit 101
12371 EOF
12372 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
12373 exit_cleanup() {
12374     umount $tmpdir/proc
12375 }
12376 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
12377 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
12378 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
12379
12380 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
12381
12382 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
12383 # to return the correct answers.
12384 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
12385     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
12386
12387 # Include the desktop and laptop task
12388 for test in desktop laptop ; do
12389     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
12390 #!/bin/sh
12391 exit 2
12392 EOF
12393     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
12394 done
12395
12396 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12397 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
12398 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
12399 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
12400
12401 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
12402 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12403 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12404 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
12405 fuser -mv
12406 </pre></blockquote>
12407
12408 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
12409 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
12410 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
12411 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
12412 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
12413 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
12414
12415 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
12416 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
12417 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
12418 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
12419 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
12420 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
12421 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
12422
12423 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
12424 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
12425 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
12426 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
12427 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
12428 packages.</p>
12429
12430       </div>
12431       <div class="tags">
12432
12433
12434         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12435
12436
12437       </div>
12438     </div>
12439     <div class="padding"></div>
12440
12441     <div class="entry">
12442       <div class="title">
12443         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
12444       </div>
12445       <div class="date">
12446          6th June 2010
12447       </div>
12448       <div class="body">
12449         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
12450 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
12451 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
12452 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
12453 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
12454 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
12455 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
12456
12457 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
12458 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
12459 COLUMNS):</p>
12460
12461 <blockquote><pre>
12462 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
12463 previous=N
12464 PREVLEVEL=
12465 RUNLEVEL=
12466 runlevel=S
12467 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
12468 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
12469 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
12470 </pre></blockquote>
12471
12472 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
12473 script.</p>
12474
12475 <blockquote><pre>
12476 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
12477 previous=N
12478 PREVLEVEL=N
12479 RUNLEVEL=S
12480 runlevel=S
12481 </pre></blockquote>
12482
12483 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
12484 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
12485 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
12486
12487 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
12488 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
12489 choice.</p>
12490
12491       </div>
12492       <div class="tags">
12493
12494
12495         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12496
12497
12498       </div>
12499     </div>
12500     <div class="padding"></div>
12501
12502     <div class="entry">
12503       <div class="title">
12504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
12505       </div>
12506       <div class="date">
12507          6th June 2010
12508       </div>
12509       <div class="body">
12510         <p>Via the
12511 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
12512 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
12513 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
12514 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
12515 following the standards wars of today.</p>
12516
12517       </div>
12518       <div class="tags">
12519
12520
12521         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12522
12523
12524       </div>
12525     </div>
12526     <div class="padding"></div>
12527
12528     <div class="entry">
12529       <div class="title">
12530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
12531       </div>
12532       <div class="date">
12533          3rd June 2010
12534       </div>
12535       <div class="body">
12536         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
12537 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
12538 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
12539 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
12540 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
12541
12542 <blockquote><pre>
12543 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
12544   vendor                    count
12545   Dell Computer Corporation     1
12546     PowerEdge 1750              1
12547   IBM                           1
12548     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
12549   Intel                         2
12550   [no-dmi-info]                 3
12551 maintainer:~#
12552 </pre></blockquote>
12553
12554 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
12555 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
12556 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
12557 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
12558 option to list the individual machines.</p>
12559
12560 <p>A larger list is
12561 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
12562 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
12563 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
12564 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
12565 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
12566 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
12567 collector.</p>
12568
12569       </div>
12570       <div class="tags">
12571
12572
12573         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
12574
12575
12576       </div>
12577     </div>
12578     <div class="padding"></div>
12579
12580     <div class="entry">
12581       <div class="title">
12582         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
12583       </div>
12584       <div class="date">
12585          1st June 2010
12586       </div>
12587       <div class="body">
12588         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
12589 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
12590 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
12591 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
12592 wait.</p>
12593
12594 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
12595 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
12596 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
12597 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
12598 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
12599 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
12600
12601 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
12602 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
12603 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
12604 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
12605 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
12606 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
12607 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
12608 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
12609
12610 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
12611
12612       </div>
12613       <div class="tags">
12614
12615
12616         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12617
12618
12619       </div>
12620     </div>
12621     <div class="padding"></div>
12622
12623     <div class="entry">
12624       <div class="title">
12625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
12626       </div>
12627       <div class="date">
12628         27th May 2010
12629       </div>
12630       <div class="body">
12631         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
12632 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
12633 issues are known and should be solved:
12634
12635 <p><ul>
12636
12637 <li>The wicd package seen to
12638 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
12639 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
12640 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
12641 seem to be on the case.</li>
12642
12643 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
12644 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
12645 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
12646 maintainer is on the case.</li>
12647
12648 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
12649 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
12650 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
12651 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
12652 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
12653 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
12654 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
12655 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
12656
12657 </ul></p>
12658
12659 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
12660 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
12661 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
12662 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
12663
12664 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12665 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12666 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12667 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12668
12669 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
12670
12671       </div>
12672       <div class="tags">
12673
12674
12675         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12676
12677
12678       </div>
12679     </div>
12680     <div class="padding"></div>
12681
12682     <div class="entry">
12683       <div class="title">
12684         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
12685       </div>
12686       <div class="date">
12687         22nd May 2010
12688       </div>
12689       <div class="body">
12690         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
12691 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
12692 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
12693 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
12694
12695 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
12696 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
12697 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
12698 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
12699 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
12700 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
12701 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
12702 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
12703 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
12704 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
12705 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
12706 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
12707 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
12708 going to work.</p>
12709
12710 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
12711 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
12712 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
12713 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
12714 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
12715 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
12716 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
12717 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
12718 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
12719 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
12720 Edu.</p>
12721
12722 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
12723 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
12724 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
12725 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
12726 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
12727 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
12728
12729 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
12730 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
12731
12732       </div>
12733       <div class="tags">
12734
12735
12736         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12737
12738
12739       </div>
12740     </div>
12741     <div class="padding"></div>
12742
12743     <div class="entry">
12744       <div class="title">
12745         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
12746       </div>
12747       <div class="date">
12748         14th May 2010
12749       </div>
12750       <div class="body">
12751         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
12752 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
12753 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
12754 expected, if I am to believe the
12755 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12756 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
12757 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
12758 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
12759 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
12760 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
12761 version.</p>
12762
12763 More information about
12764 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12765 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
12766 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
12767 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12768
12769 <blockquote><pre>
12770 CONCURRENCY=none
12771 </pre></blockquote>
12772
12773 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12774 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12775 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12776 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12777
12778       </div>
12779       <div class="tags">
12780
12781
12782         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12783
12784
12785       </div>
12786     </div>
12787     <div class="padding"></div>
12788
12789     <div class="entry">
12790       <div class="title">
12791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
12792       </div>
12793       <div class="date">
12794         14th May 2010
12795       </div>
12796       <div class="body">
12797         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
12798 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
12799 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
12800 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
12801 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
12802 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
12803 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
12804 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
12805
12806 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
12807 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
12808 this on the collector host:</p>
12809
12810 <blockquote><pre>
12811 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
12812 </pre></blockquote>
12813
12814 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
12815 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
12816
12817 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
12818 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
12819 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
12820 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
12821 written yet.</p>
12822
12823       </div>
12824       <div class="tags">
12825
12826
12827         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
12828
12829
12830       </div>
12831     </div>
12832     <div class="padding"></div>
12833
12834     <div class="entry">
12835       <div class="title">
12836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
12837       </div>
12838       <div class="date">
12839         13th May 2010
12840       </div>
12841       <div class="body">
12842         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
12843 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
12844 has been
12845 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
12846
12847 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
12848 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
12849 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
12850 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
12851 based boot system.  Tollef is
12852 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
12853 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
12854 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
12855 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
12856 at the moment do not.</p>
12857
12858 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
12859 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
12860 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
12861 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
12862 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
12863 way forward.</p>
12864
12865 <p>In the mean time, based on the
12866 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12867 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
12868 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
12869 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
12870 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
12871 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
12872 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
12873 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
12874
12875       </div>
12876       <div class="tags">
12877
12878
12879         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12880
12881
12882       </div>
12883     </div>
12884     <div class="padding"></div>
12885
12886     <div class="entry">
12887       <div class="title">
12888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
12889       </div>
12890       <div class="date">
12891          6th May 2010
12892       </div>
12893       <div class="body">
12894         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
12895 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
12896 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
12897 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
12898 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12899 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
12900 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12901
12902 <blockquote><pre>
12903 CONCURRENCY=makefile
12904 </pre></blockquote>
12905
12906 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
12907 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
12908 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
12909 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
12910 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
12911 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
12912 make this happen.</p>
12913
12914 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
12915 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
12916 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
12917 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
12918 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
12919
12920 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
12921 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
12922 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
12923 fix the remaining issues.</p>
12924
12925 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12926 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12927 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12928 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12929
12930       </div>
12931       <div class="tags">
12932
12933
12934         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12935
12936
12937       </div>
12938     </div>
12939     <div class="padding"></div>
12940
12941     <div class="entry">
12942       <div class="title">
12943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
12944       </div>
12945       <div class="date">
12946         27th July 2009
12947       </div>
12948       <div class="body">
12949         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
12950 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
12951 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
12952 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
12953 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
12954 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
12955 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
12956
12957 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
12958 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
12959 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
12960
12961       </div>
12962       <div class="tags">
12963
12964
12965         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12966
12967
12968       </div>
12969     </div>
12970     <div class="padding"></div>
12971
12972     <div class="entry">
12973       <div class="title">
12974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
12975       </div>
12976       <div class="date">
12977         22nd July 2009
12978       </div>
12979       <div class="body">
12980         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
12981 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
12982 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
12983 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
12984 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
12985 the package up to date.</p>
12986
12987 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
12988 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
12989 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
12990 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
12991 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
12992 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
12993 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
12994 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
12995 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
12996 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
12997 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
12998 working on the future release.</p>
12999
13000 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
13001 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
13002
13003       </div>
13004       <div class="tags">
13005
13006
13007         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13008
13009
13010       </div>
13011     </div>
13012     <div class="padding"></div>
13013
13014     <div class="entry">
13015       <div class="title">
13016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
13017       </div>
13018       <div class="date">
13019         24th June 2009
13020       </div>
13021       <div class="body">
13022         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
13023 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
13024 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
13025 funded
13026 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
13027 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
13028 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
13029 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
13030 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
13031 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
13032
13033 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
13034 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
13035 boot:</p>
13036
13037 <ul>
13038
13039 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
13040
13041 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
13042    clock is in UTC.</li>
13043
13044 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
13045    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13046    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
13047
13048 </ul>
13049
13050 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
13051 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
13052 Villegas</a>.
13053
13054 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
13055 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
13056 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
13057 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
13058 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
13059 using this.</p>
13060
13061 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
13062 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
13063 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
13064 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
13065 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
13066 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
13067 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
13068
13069       </div>
13070       <div class="tags">
13071
13072
13073         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13074
13075
13076       </div>
13077     </div>
13078     <div class="padding"></div>
13079
13080     <div class="entry">
13081       <div class="title">
13082         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
13083       </div>
13084       <div class="date">
13085         17th May 2009
13086       </div>
13087       <div class="body">
13088         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
13089 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
13090 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
13091 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
13092 dager siden kom
13093 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
13094 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
13095 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
13096 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
13097 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
13098
13099 <blockquote>
13100 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
13101 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
13102 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
13103 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
13104 </blockquote>
13105
13106 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
13107 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
13108 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
13109 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
13110 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
13111
13112 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
13113 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
13114 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
13115
13116       </div>
13117       <div class="tags">
13118
13119
13120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
13121
13122
13123       </div>
13124     </div>
13125     <div class="padding"></div>
13126
13127     <div class="entry">
13128       <div class="title">
13129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
13130       </div>
13131       <div class="date">
13132          7th May 2009
13133       </div>
13134       <div class="body">
13135         <p>Kom over
13136 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
13137 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
13138 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
13139 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
13140 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
13141 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
13142 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
13143
13144       </div>
13145       <div class="tags">
13146
13147
13148         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13149
13150
13151       </div>
13152     </div>
13153     <div class="padding"></div>
13154
13155     <div class="entry">
13156       <div class="title">
13157         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
13158       </div>
13159       <div class="date">
13160          2nd May 2009
13161       </div>
13162       <div class="body">
13163         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
13164 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
13165 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
13166 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
13167 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
13168 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
13169 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
13170 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
13171 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
13172 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
13173 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
13174 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
13175 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
13176 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
13177 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
13178 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
13179 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
13180 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
13181 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
13182 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
13183
13184 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
13185 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
13186 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
13187 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
13188 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
13189 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
13190 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
13191 betydelige.</p>
13192
13193       </div>
13194       <div class="tags">
13195
13196
13197         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13198
13199
13200       </div>
13201     </div>
13202     <div class="padding"></div>
13203
13204     <div class="entry">
13205       <div class="title">
13206         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
13207       </div>
13208       <div class="date">
13209          2nd May 2009
13210       </div>
13211       <div class="body">
13212         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
13213 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
13214 do not yet know them.</p>
13215
13216 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
13217 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
13218 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
13219 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
13220 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
13221 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
13222 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
13223 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
13224 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
13225 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
13226 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
13227
13228 <p>The second one is
13229 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
13230 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
13231 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
13232 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
13233 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
13234 and the company behind it is running
13235 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
13236 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
13237 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
13238 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
13239 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
13240 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
13241 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
13242 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
13243
13244 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
13245 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
13246 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
13247 surrounded by today.</p>
13248
13249       </div>
13250       <div class="tags">
13251
13252
13253         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13254
13255
13256       </div>
13257     </div>
13258     <div class="padding"></div>
13259
13260     <div class="entry">
13261       <div class="title">
13262         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
13263       </div>
13264       <div class="date">
13265         28th April 2009
13266       </div>
13267       <div class="body">
13268         <p>Julien Blache
13269 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
13270 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
13271 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
13272 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
13273 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
13274 properties.</p>
13275
13276       </div>
13277       <div class="tags">
13278
13279
13280         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13281
13282
13283       </div>
13284     </div>
13285     <div class="padding"></div>
13286
13287     <div class="entry">
13288       <div class="title">
13289         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
13290       </div>
13291       <div class="date">
13292         30th March 2009
13293       </div>
13294       <div class="body">
13295         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
13296 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
13297 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
13298 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
13299 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
13300 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
13301 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
13302 application.</p>
13303
13304 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
13305 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
13306 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
13307 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
13308 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
13309 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
13310 blocked from doing so.</p>
13311
13312 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
13313 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
13314 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
13315 requirements change.</p>
13316
13317 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
13318 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
13319 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
13320
13321       </div>
13322       <div class="tags">
13323
13324
13325         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13326
13327
13328       </div>
13329     </div>
13330     <div class="padding"></div>
13331
13332     <div class="entry">
13333       <div class="title">
13334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
13335       </div>
13336       <div class="date">
13337         29th March 2009
13338       </div>
13339       <div class="body">
13340         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
13341 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
13342 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
13343 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
13344 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
13345 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
13346 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
13347 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
13348 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
13349 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
13350 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
13351 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
13352 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
13353 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
13354 now. :)</p>
13355
13356       </div>
13357       <div class="tags">
13358
13359
13360         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13361
13362
13363       </div>
13364     </div>
13365     <div class="padding"></div>
13366
13367     <div class="entry">
13368       <div class="title">
13369         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
13370       </div>
13371       <div class="date">
13372         29th March 2009
13373       </div>
13374       <div class="body">
13375         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
13376 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
13377 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
13378 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
13379 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
13380 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
13381
13382 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
13383 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
13384 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
13385 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
13386 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
13387 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
13388 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
13389 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
13390 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
13391 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
13392 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
13393 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
13394 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
13395
13396 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
13397 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
13398 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
13399 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
13400
13401 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
13402 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
13403
13404 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
13405 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
13406 new IETF work group?</p>
13407
13408       </div>
13409       <div class="tags">
13410
13411
13412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13413
13414
13415       </div>
13416     </div>
13417     <div class="padding"></div>
13418
13419     <div class="entry">
13420       <div class="title">
13421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
13422       </div>
13423       <div class="date">
13424         15th February 2009
13425       </div>
13426       <div class="body">
13427         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
13428 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
13429 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
13430 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
13431 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
13432 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
13433 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
13434 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
13435 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
13436 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
13437 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
13438 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
13439
13440       </div>
13441       <div class="tags">
13442
13443
13444         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
13445
13446
13447       </div>
13448     </div>
13449     <div class="padding"></div>
13450
13451     <div class="entry">
13452       <div class="title">
13453         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
13454       </div>
13455       <div class="date">
13456          7th December 2008
13457       </div>
13458       <div class="body">
13459         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
13460 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
13461 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
13462 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
13463 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
13464 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
13465 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
13466 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
13467
13468 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
13469 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
13470 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
13471 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
13472 of these cards.</p>
13473
13474       </div>
13475       <div class="tags">
13476
13477
13478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
13479
13480
13481       </div>
13482     </div>
13483     <div class="padding"></div>
13484
13485     <div class="entry">
13486       <div class="title">
13487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
13488       </div>
13489       <div class="date">
13490         25th November 2008
13491       </div>
13492       <div class="body">
13493         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
13494 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
13495 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
13496 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
13497 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
13498 notes are available on
13499 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
13500 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
13501 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
13502 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
13503 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
13504 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
13505 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
13506 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
13507 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
13508
13509 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
13510 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
13511
13512       </div>
13513       <div class="tags">
13514
13515
13516         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13517
13518
13519       </div>
13520     </div>
13521     <div class="padding"></div>
13522
13523     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
13524     <div id="sidebar">
13525
13526
13527
13528 <h2>Archive</h2>
13529 <ul>
13530
13531 <li>2018
13532 <ul>
13533
13534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/01/">January (1)</a></li>
13535
13536 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/02/">February (5)</a></li>
13537
13538 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/03/">March (5)</a></li>
13539
13540 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/04/">April (3)</a></li>
13541
13542 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13543
13544 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/07/">July (5)</a></li>
13545
13546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13547
13548 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/09/">September (3)</a></li>
13549
13550 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/10/">October (1)</a></li>
13551
13552 </ul></li>
13553
13554 <li>2017
13555 <ul>
13556
13557 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
13558
13559 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
13560
13561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
13562
13563 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
13564
13565 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
13566
13567 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
13568
13569 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
13570
13571 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
13572
13573 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
13574
13575 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13576
13577 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/12/">December (4)</a></li>
13578
13579 </ul></li>
13580
13581 <li>2016
13582 <ul>
13583
13584 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
13585
13586 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
13587
13588 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13589
13590 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
13591
13592 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
13593
13594 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13595
13596 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
13597
13598 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
13599
13600 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
13601
13602 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
13603
13604 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
13605
13606 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
13607
13608 </ul></li>
13609
13610 <li>2015
13611 <ul>
13612
13613 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
13614
13615 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
13616
13617 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
13618
13619 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
13620
13621 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
13622
13623 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
13624
13625 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
13626
13627 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
13628
13629 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
13630
13631 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
13632
13633 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
13634
13635 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13636
13637 </ul></li>
13638
13639 <li>2014
13640 <ul>
13641
13642 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
13643
13644 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
13645
13646 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
13647
13648 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
13649
13650 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
13651
13652 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13653
13654 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
13655
13656 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
13657
13658 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
13659
13660 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
13661
13662 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13663
13664 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
13665
13666 </ul></li>
13667
13668 <li>2013
13669 <ul>
13670
13671 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
13672
13673 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
13674
13675 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
13676
13677 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
13678
13679 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13680
13681 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
13682
13683 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
13684
13685 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13686
13687 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
13688
13689 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
13690
13691 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
13692
13693 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13694
13695 </ul></li>
13696
13697 <li>2012
13698 <ul>
13699
13700 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
13701
13702 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
13703
13704 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
13705
13706 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
13707
13708 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
13709
13710 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
13711
13712 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
13713
13714 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13715
13716 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
13717
13718 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
13719
13720 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
13721
13722 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13723
13724 </ul></li>
13725
13726 <li>2011
13727 <ul>
13728
13729 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
13730
13731 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
13732
13733 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
13734
13735 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
13736
13737 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
13738
13739 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13740
13741 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
13742
13743 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13744
13745 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
13746
13747 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13748
13749 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13750
13751 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
13752
13753 </ul></li>
13754
13755 <li>2010
13756 <ul>
13757
13758 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
13759
13760 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
13761
13762 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13763
13764 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
13765
13766 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13767
13768 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
13769
13770 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
13771
13772 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
13773
13774 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
13775
13776 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
13777
13778 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
13779
13780 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
13781
13782 </ul></li>
13783
13784 <li>2009
13785 <ul>
13786
13787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
13788
13789 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
13790
13791 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
13792
13793 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
13794
13795 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13796
13797 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
13798
13799 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
13800
13801 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13802
13803 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
13804
13805 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13806
13807 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13808
13809 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13810
13811 </ul></li>
13812
13813 <li>2008
13814 <ul>
13815
13816 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
13817
13818 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13819
13820 </ul></li>
13821
13822 </ul>
13823
13824
13825
13826 <h2>Tags</h2>
13827 <ul>
13828
13829  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (16)</a></li>
13830
13831  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
13832
13833  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
13834
13835  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
13836
13837  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (10)</a></li>
13838
13839  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (17)</a></li>
13840
13841  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
13842
13843  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
13844
13845  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (163)</a></li>
13846
13847  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
13848
13849  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (4)</a></li>
13850
13851  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
13852
13853  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (17)</a></li>
13854
13855  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (25)</a></li>
13856
13857  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
13858
13859  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (386)</a></li>
13860
13861  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
13862
13863  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (13)</a></li>
13864
13865  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (32)</a></li>
13866
13867  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
13868
13869  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
13870
13871  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
13872
13873  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
13874
13875  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (16)</a></li>
13876
13877  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (20)</a></li>
13878
13879  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi (3)</a></li>
13880
13881  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
13882
13883  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (4)</a></li>
13884
13885  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
13886
13887  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
13888
13889  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
13890
13891  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
13892
13893  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (41)</a></li>
13894
13895  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (10)</a></li>
13896
13897  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (299)</a></li>
13898
13899  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (190)</a></li>
13900
13901  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (33)</a></li>
13902
13903  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
13904
13905  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (72)</a></li>
13906
13907  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (107)</a></li>
13908
13909  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (2)</a></li>
13910
13911  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
13912
13913  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
13914
13915  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
13916
13917  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
13918
13919  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
13920
13921  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (6)</a></li>
13922
13923  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
13924
13925  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (54)</a></li>
13926
13927  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
13928
13929  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
13930
13931  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (55)</a></li>
13932
13933  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (6)</a></li>
13934
13935  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (12)</a></li>
13936
13937  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (55)</a></li>
13938
13939  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (4)</a></li>
13940
13941  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
13942
13943  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
13944
13945  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri (12)</a></li>
13946
13947  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (68)</a></li>
13948
13949  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
13950
13951  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (41)</a></li>
13952
13953 </ul>
13954
13955
13956     </div>
13957     <p style="text-align: right">
13958  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
13959 </p>
13960
13961   </body>
13962 </html>