blog/archive/2010/06/06.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from June 2010</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from June 2010</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>
  15 &lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
  16 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
  17 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
  18 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
  19 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
  20
  21 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
  22 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
  23 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
  24 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
  25 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
  26 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
  27
  28 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
  29 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
  30 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
  31 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
  32 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
  33 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
  34 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
  35 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
  36
  37 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
  38 </description>
  39         </item>
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  41         <item>
  42                 <title>Togsatsing på norsk, mot sykkel</title>
  43                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p___norsk__mot_sykkel.html</link>
  44                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p___norsk__mot_sykkel.html</guid>
  45                 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jun 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
  46                 <description>
  47 &lt;p&gt;Det står dårlig til med toget når en finner på å la det
  48 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3677060.ece&quot;&gt;kappkjøre
  49 med sykkel&lt;/a&gt;...  Jeg tror det trengs strukturendringer for å få
  50 fikset på togproblemene i Norge.&lt;/p&gt;
  51
  52 &lt;p&gt;Mon tro hva toglinje mellom Narvik og Tromsø ville hatt slags
  53 effekt på området der?&lt;/p&gt;
  54 </description>
  55         </item>
  56
  57         <item>
  58                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
  59                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
  60                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
  61                 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
  62                 <description>
  63 &lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
  64 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
  65 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
  66 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
  67 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
  68
  69 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  70 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
  71   vendor                    count
  72   Dell Computer Corporation     1
  73     PowerEdge 1750              1
  74   IBM                           1
  75     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
  76   Intel                         2
  77   [no-dmi-info]                 3
  78 maintainer:~#
  79 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  80
  81 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
  82 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
  83 information listed with Intel as vendor and mo model, and virtual Xen
  84 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
  85 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
  86
  87 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
  88 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
  89 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
  90 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
  91 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
  92 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
  93 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
  94 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
  95 </description>
  96         </item>
  97
  98         <item>
  99                 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
 100                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
 101                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
 102                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
 103                 <description>
 104 &lt;p&gt;Via the
 105 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
 106 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
 107 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
 108 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
 109 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
 110 </description>
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