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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="https://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="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/45_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__391_to_go.html">45 orphaned Debian packages moved to git, 391 to go</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         25th April 2024
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Nine days ago, I started migrating orphaned Debian packages with no
  32 version control system listed in debian/control of the source to git.
  33 At the time there were 438 such packages.  Now there are 391,
  34 according to the UDD.  In reality it is slightly less, as there is a
  35 delay between uploads and UDD updates.  In the nine days since, I have
  36 thus been able to work my way through ten percent of the packages.  I
  37 am starting to run out of steam, and hope someone else will also help
  38 brushing some dust of these packages.  Here is a recipe how to do it.
  39
  40 I start by picking a random package by querying the UDD for a list of
  41 10 random packages from the set of remaining packages:
  42
  43 <blockquote><pre>
  44 PGPASSWORD="udd-mirror" psql --port=5432 --host=udd-mirror.debian.net \
  45   --username=udd-mirror udd -c "select source from sources \
  46    where release = 'sid' and (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' \
  47    OR vcs_browser ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL \
  48    OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%' \
  49    order by random() limit 10;"
  50 </pre></blockquote>
  51
  52 <p>Next, I visit http://salsa.debian.org/debian and search for the
  53 package name, to ensure no git repository already exist.  If it does,
  54 I clone it and try to get it to an uploadable state, and add the Vcs-*
  55 entries in d/control to make the repository more widely known.  These
  56 packages are a minority, so I will not cover that use case here.</p>
  57
  58 <p>For packages without an existing git repository, I run the
  59 following script <tt>debian-snap-to-salsa</tt> to prepare a git
  60 repository with the existing packaging.</p>
  61
  62 <blockquote><pre>
  63 #!/bin/sh
  64 #
  65 # See also https://bugs.debian.org/804722#31
  66
  67 set -e
  68
  69 # Move to this Standards-Version.
  70 SV_LATEST=4.7.0
  71
  72 PKG="$1"
  73
  74 if [ -z "$PKG" ]; then
  75     echo "usage: $0 <pkgname>"
  76     exit 1
  77 fi
  78
  79 if [ -e "${PKG}-salsa" ]; then
  80     echo "error: ${PKG}-salsa already exist, aborting."
  81     exit 1
  82 fi
  83
  84 if [ -z "ALLOWFAILURE" ] ; then
  85     ALLOWFAILURE=false
  86 fi
  87
  88 # Fetch every snapshotted source package.  Manually loop until all
  89 # transfers succeed, as 'gbp import-dscs --debsnap' do not fail on
  90 # download failures.
  91 until debsnap --force -v $PKG || $ALLOWFAILURE ; do sleep 1; done
  92 mkdir ${PKG}-salsa; cd ${PKG}-salsa
  93 git init
  94
  95 # Specify branches to override any debian/gbp.conf file present in the
  96 # source package.
  97 gbp import-dscs  --debian-branch=master --upstream-branch=upstream \
  98     --pristine-tar ../source-$PKG/*.dsc
  99
 100 # Add Vcs pointing to Salsa Debian project (must be manually created
 101 # and pushed to).
 102 if ! grep -q ^Vcs- debian/control ; then
 103     awk "BEGIN { s=1 } /^\$/ { if (s==1) { print \"Vcs-Browser: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/$PKG\"; print \"Vcs-Git: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/$PKG.git\" }; s=0 } { print }" < debian/control > debian/control.new && mv debian/control.new debian/control
 104     git commit -m "Updated vcs in d/control to Salsa." debian/control
 105 fi
 106
 107 # Tell gbp to enforce the use of pristine-tar.
 108 inifile +inifile debian/gbp.conf +create +section DEFAULT +key pristine-tar +value True
 109 git add debian/gbp.conf
 110 git commit -m "Added d/gbp.conf to enforce the use of pristine-tar." debian/gbp.conf
 111
 112 # Update to latest Standards-Version.
 113 SV="$(grep ^Standards-Version: debian/control|awk '{print $2}')"
 114 if [ $SV_LATEST != $SV ]; then
 115     sed -i "s/\(Standards-Version: \)\(.*\)/\1$SV_LATEST/" debian/control
 116     git commit -m "Updated Standards-Version from $SV to $SV_LATEST." debian/control
 117 fi
 118
 119 if grep -q pkg-config debian/control; then
 120     sed -i s/pkg-config/pkgconf/ debian/control
 121     git commit -m "Replaced obsolete pkg-config build dependency with pkgconf." debian/control
 122 fi
 123
 124 if grep -q libncurses5-dev debian/control; then
 125     sed -i s/libncurses5-dev/libncurses-dev/ debian/control
 126     git commit -m "Replaced obsolete libncurses5-dev build dependency with libncurses-dev." debian/control
 127 fi
 128 </pre></blockquote>
 129
 130 Some times the debsnap script fail to download some of the versions.
 131 In those cases I investigate, and if I decide the failing versions
 132 will not be missed, I call it using ALLOWFAILURE=true to ignore the
 133 problem and create the git repository anyway.</p>
 134
 135 <p>With the git repository in place, I do a test build (gbp
 136 buildpackage) to ensure the build is actually working.  If it does not
 137 I pick a different package, or if the build failure is trivial to fix,
 138 I fix it before continuing.  At this stage I revisit
 139 http://salsa.debian.org/debian and create the project under this group
 140 for the package.  I then follow the instructions to publish the local
 141 git repository.  Here is from a recent example:</p>
 142
 143 <blockquote><pre>
 144 git remote add origin git@salsa.debian.org:debian/perl-byacc.git
 145 git push --set-upstream origin master upstream pristine-tar
 146 git push --tags
 147 </pre></blockquote>
 148
 149 <p>With a working build, I have a look at the build rules if I want to
 150 remove some more dust.  I normally try to move to debhelper compat
 151 level 13, which involves removing debian/compat and modifying
 152 debian/control to build depend on debhelper-compat (=13).  I also test
 153 with 'Rules-Requires-Root: no' in debian/control and verify in
 154 debian/rules that hardening is enabled, and include all of these if
 155 the package still build.  If it fail to build with level 13, I try
 156 with 12, 11, 10 and so on until I find a level where it build, as I do
 157 not want to spend a lot of time fixing build issues.</p>
 158
 159 <p>Some times, when I feel inspired, I make sure debian/copyright is
 160 converted to the machine readable format, often by starting with
 161 'debhelper -cc' and then cleaning up the autogenerated content until
 162 it matches realities.  If I feel like it, I might also clean up
 163 non-dh-based debian/rules files to use the short style dh build
 164 rules.</p>
 165
 166 <p>Once I have removed all the dust I care to process for the package,
 167 I run 'gbp dch' to generate a debian/changelog entry based on the
 168 commits done so far, run 'dch -r' to switch from 'UNRELEASED' to
 169 'unstable' and get an editor to make sure the 'QA upload' marker is in
 170 place and that all long commit descriptions are wrapped into sensible
 171 lengths, run 'debcommit --release -a' to commit and tag the new
 172 debian/changelog entry, run 'debuild -S' to build a source only
 173 package, and 'dput ../perl-byacc_2.0-10_source.changes' to do the
 174 upload.  During the entire process, and many times per step, I run
 175 'debuild' to verify the changes done still work.  I also some times
 176 verify the set of built files using 'find debian' to see if I can spot
 177 any problems (like no file in usr/bin any more or empty package).  I
 178 also try to fix all lintian issues reported at the end of each
 179 'debuild' run.</p>
 180
 181 <p>If I find Debian specific patches, I try to ensure their metadata
 182 is fairly up to date and some times I even try to reach out to
 183 upstream, to make the upstream project aware of the patches.  Most of
 184 my emails bounce, so the success rate is low.  For projects with no
 185 Homepage entry in debian/control I try to track down one, and for
 186 packages with no debian/watch file I try to create one.  But at least
 187 for some of the packages I have been unable to find a functioning
 188 upstream, and must skip both of these.</p>
 189
 190 <p>If I could handle ten percent in nine days, twenty people could
 191 complete the rest in less then five days.  I use approximately twenty
 192 minutes per package, when I have twenty minutes spare time to spend.
 193 Perhaps you got twenty minutes to spare too?</p>
 194
 195 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 196 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 197 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 198
 199 <p><strong>Update 2024-05-04:</strong> There is
 200 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2024-05-04-debian-snap-to-salsa.sh">an
 201 updated edition of my migration script</a>, last updated
 202 2024-04-05.</p>
 203
 204       </div>
 205       <div class="tags">
 206
 207
 208         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 209
 210
 211       </div>
 212     </div>
 213     <div class="padding"></div>
 214
 215     <div class="entry">
 216       <div class="title">
 217         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html">Time to move orphaned Debian packages to git</a>
 218       </div>
 219       <div class="date">
 220         14th April 2024
 221       </div>
 222       <div class="body">
 223         <p>There are several packages in Debian without a associated git
 224 repository with the packaging history.  This is unfortunate and it
 225 would be nice if more of these would do so.  Quote a lot of these are
 226 without a maintainer, ie listed as maintained by the
 227 '<a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=packages%40qa.debian.org">Debian
 228 QA Group</a>' place holder.  In fact, 438 packages have this property
 229 according to UDD (<tt>SELECT source FROM sources WHERE release = 'sid'
 230 AND (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' OR vcs_browser ilike
 231 '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND
 232 maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%';</tt>).  Such packages can
 233 be updated without much coordination by any Debian developer, as they
 234 are considered orphaned.</p>
 235
 236 <p>To try to improve the situation and reduce the number of packages
 237 without associated git repository, I started a few days ago to search
 238 out candiates and provide them with a git repository under the
 239 'debian' collaborative Salsa project.  I started with the packages
 240 pointing to obsolete Alioth git repositories, and am now working my
 241 way across the ones completely without git references.  In addition to
 242 updating the Vcs-* debian/control fields, I try to update
 243 Standards-Version, debhelper compat level, simplify d/rules, switch to
 244 Rules-Requires-Root: no and fix lintian issues reported.  I only
 245 implement those that are trivial to fix, to avoid spending too much
 246 time on each orphaned package.  So far my experience is that it take
 247 aproximately 20 minutes to convert a package without any git
 248 references, and a lot more for packages with existing git repositories
 249 incompatible with git-buildpackages.</p>
 250
 251 <p>So far I have converted 10 packages, and I will keep going until I
 252 run out of steam.  As should be clear from the numbers, there is
 253 enough packages remaining for more people to do the same without
 254 stepping on each others toes.  I find it useful to start by searching
 255 for a git repo already on salsa, as I find that some times a git repo
 256 has already been created, but no new version is uploaded to Debian
 257 yet.  In those cases I start with the existing git repository.  I
 258 convert to the git-buildpackage+pristine-tar workflow, and ensure a
 259 debian/gbp.conf file with "pristine-tar=True" is added early, to avoid
 260 uploading a orig.tar.gz with the wrong checksum by mistake.  Did that
 261 three times in the begin before I remembered my mistake.</p>
 262
 263 <p>So, if you are a Debian Developer and got some spare time, perhaps
 264 considering migrating some orphaned packages to git?</p>
 265
 266 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 267 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 268 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 269
 270       </div>
 271       <div class="tags">
 272
 273
 274         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 275
 276
 277       </div>
 278     </div>
 279     <div class="padding"></div>
 280
 281     <div class="entry">
 282       <div class="title">
 283         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_and_improved_sqlcipher_in_Debian_for_accessing_Signal_database.html">New and improved sqlcipher in Debian for accessing Signal database</a>
 284       </div>
 285       <div class="date">
 286         12th November 2023
 287       </div>
 288       <div class="body">
 289         <p>For a while now I wanted to have direct access to the
 290 <a href="https://signal.org/">Signal</a> database of messages and
 291 channels of my Desktop edition of Signal.  I prefer the enforced end
 292 to end encryption of Signal these days for my communication with
 293 friends and family, to increase the level of safety and privacy as
 294 well as raising the cost of the mass surveillance government and
 295 non-government entities practice these days.  In August I came across
 296 a nice
 297 <a href="https://www.yoranbrondsema.com/post/the-guide-to-extracting-statistics-from-your-signal-conversations/">recipe
 298 on how to use sqlcipher to extract statistics from the Signal
 299 database</a> explaining how to do this.  Unfortunately this did not
 300 work with the version of sqlcipher in Debian.  The
 301 <a href="http://tracker.debian.org/sqlcipher/">sqlcipher</a>
 302 package is a "fork" of the sqlite package with added support for
 303 encrypted databases.  Sadly the current Debian maintainer
 304 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/961598">announced more than three
 305 years ago that he did not have time to maintain sqlcipher</a>, so it
 306 seemed unlikely to be upgraded by the maintainer.  I was reluctant to
 307 take on the job myself, as I have very limited experience maintaining
 308 shared libraries in Debian.  After waiting and hoping for a few
 309 months, I gave up the last  week, and set out to update the package.  In
 310 the process I orphaned it to make it more obvious for the next person
 311 looking at it that the package need proper maintenance.</p>
 312
 313 <p>The version in Debian was around five years old, and quite a lot of
 314 changes had taken place upstream into the Debian maintenance git
 315 repository.  After spending a few days importing the new upstream
 316 versions, realising that upstream did not care much for SONAME
 317 versioning as I saw library symbols being both added and removed with
 318 minor version number changes to the project, I concluded that I had to
 319 do a SONAME bump of the library package to avoid surprising the
 320 reverse dependencies.  I even added a simple
 321 autopkgtest script to ensure the package work as intended.  Dug deep
 322 into the hole of learning shared library maintenance, I set out a few
 323 days ago to upload the new version to Debian experimental to see what
 324 the quality assurance framework in Debian had to say about the result.
 325 The feedback told me the pacakge was not too shabby, and yesterday I
 326 uploaded the latest version to Debian unstable.  It should enter
 327 testing today or tomorrow, perhaps delayed by
 328 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1055812">a small library
 329 transition</a>.</p>
 330
 331 <p>Armed with a new version of sqlcipher, I can now have a look at the
 332 SQL database in ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite.  First, one need to
 333 fetch the encryption key from the Signal configuration using this
 334 simple JSON extraction command:</p>
 335
 336 <pre>/usr/bin/jq -r '."key"' ~/.config/Signal/config.json</pre>
 337
 338 <p>Assuming the result from that command is 'secretkey', which is a
 339 hexadecimal number representing the key used to encrypt the database.
 340 Next, one can now connect to the database and inject the encryption
 341 key for access via SQL to fetch information from the database.  Here
 342 is an example dumping the database structure:</p>
 343
 344 <pre>
 345 % sqlcipher ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite
 346 sqlite> PRAGMA key = "x'secretkey'";
 347 sqlite> .schema
 348 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat1(tbl,idx,stat);
 349 CREATE TABLE conversations(
 350       id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 351       json TEXT,
 352
 353       active_at INTEGER,
 354       type STRING,
 355       members TEXT,
 356       name TEXT,
 357       profileName TEXT
 358     , profileFamilyName TEXT, profileFullName TEXT, e164 TEXT, serviceId TEXT, groupId TEXT, profileLastFetchedAt INTEGER);
 359 CREATE TABLE identityKeys(
 360       id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 361       json TEXT
 362     );
 363 CREATE TABLE items(
 364       id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 365       json TEXT
 366     );
 367 CREATE TABLE sessions(
 368       id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 369       conversationId TEXT,
 370       json TEXT
 371     , ourServiceId STRING, serviceId STRING);
 372 CREATE TABLE attachment_downloads(
 373     id STRING primary key,
 374     timestamp INTEGER,
 375     pending INTEGER,
 376     json TEXT
 377   );
 378 CREATE TABLE sticker_packs(
 379     id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 380     key TEXT NOT NULL,
 381
 382     author STRING,
 383     coverStickerId INTEGER,
 384     createdAt INTEGER,
 385     downloadAttempts INTEGER,
 386     installedAt INTEGER,
 387     lastUsed INTEGER,
 388     status STRING,
 389     stickerCount INTEGER,
 390     title STRING
 391   , attemptedStatus STRING, position INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync
 392       INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL);
 393 CREATE TABLE stickers(
 394     id INTEGER NOT NULL,
 395     packId TEXT NOT NULL,
 396
 397     emoji STRING,
 398     height INTEGER,
 399     isCoverOnly INTEGER,
 400     lastUsed INTEGER,
 401     path STRING,
 402     width INTEGER,
 403
 404     PRIMARY KEY (id, packId),
 405     CONSTRAINT stickers_fk
 406       FOREIGN KEY (packId)
 407       REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
 408       ON DELETE CASCADE
 409   );
 410 CREATE TABLE sticker_references(
 411     messageId STRING,
 412     packId TEXT,
 413     CONSTRAINT sticker_references_fk
 414       FOREIGN KEY(packId)
 415       REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
 416       ON DELETE CASCADE
 417   );
 418 CREATE TABLE emojis(
 419     shortName TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 420     lastUsage INTEGER
 421   );
 422 CREATE TABLE messages(
 423         rowid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 424         id STRING UNIQUE,
 425         json TEXT,
 426         readStatus INTEGER,
 427         expires_at INTEGER,
 428         sent_at INTEGER,
 429         schemaVersion INTEGER,
 430         conversationId STRING,
 431         received_at INTEGER,
 432         source STRING,
 433         hasAttachments INTEGER,
 434         hasFileAttachments INTEGER,
 435         hasVisualMediaAttachments INTEGER,
 436         expireTimer INTEGER,
 437         expirationStartTimestamp INTEGER,
 438         type STRING,
 439         body TEXT,
 440         messageTimer INTEGER,
 441         messageTimerStart INTEGER,
 442         messageTimerExpiresAt INTEGER,
 443         isErased INTEGER,
 444         isViewOnce INTEGER,
 445         sourceServiceId TEXT, serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, storyId STRING, isStory INTEGER
 446         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (type IS 'story'), isChangeCreatedByUs INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, isTimerChangeFromSync INTEGER
 447         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 448           json_extract(json, '$.expirationTimerUpdate.fromSync') IS 1
 449         ), seenStatus NUMBER default 0, storyDistributionListId STRING, expiresAt INT
 450         GENERATED ALWAYS
 451         AS (ifnull(
 452           expirationStartTimestamp + (expireTimer * 1000),
 453           9007199254740991
 454         )), shouldAffectActivity INTEGER
 455         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 456           type IS NULL
 457           OR
 458           type NOT IN (
 459             'change-number-notification',
 460             'contact-removed-notification',
 461             'conversation-merge',
 462             'group-v1-migration',
 463             'keychange',
 464             'message-history-unsynced',
 465             'profile-change',
 466             'story',
 467             'universal-timer-notification',
 468             'verified-change'
 469           )
 470         ), shouldAffectPreview INTEGER
 471         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 472           type IS NULL
 473           OR
 474           type NOT IN (
 475             'change-number-notification',
 476             'contact-removed-notification',
 477             'conversation-merge',
 478             'group-v1-migration',
 479             'keychange',
 480             'message-history-unsynced',
 481             'profile-change',
 482             'story',
 483             'universal-timer-notification',
 484             'verified-change'
 485           )
 486         ), isUserInitiatedMessage INTEGER
 487         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 488           type IS NULL
 489           OR
 490           type NOT IN (
 491             'change-number-notification',
 492             'contact-removed-notification',
 493             'conversation-merge',
 494             'group-v1-migration',
 495             'group-v2-change',
 496             'keychange',
 497             'message-history-unsynced',
 498             'profile-change',
 499             'story',
 500             'universal-timer-notification',
 501             'verified-change'
 502           )
 503         ), mentionsMe INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, isGroupLeaveEvent INTEGER
 504         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 505           type IS 'group-v2-change' AND
 506           json_array_length(json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details')) IS 1 AND
 507           json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details[0].type') IS 'member-remove' AND
 508           json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.from') IS NOT NULL AND
 509           json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.from') IS json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details[0].aci')
 510         ), isGroupLeaveEventFromOther INTEGER
 511         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 512           isGroupLeaveEvent IS 1
 513           AND
 514           isChangeCreatedByUs IS 0
 515         ), callId TEXT
 516         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 517           json_extract(json, '$.callId')
 518         ));
 519 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat4(tbl,idx,neq,nlt,ndlt,sample);
 520 CREATE TABLE jobs(
 521         id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 522         queueType TEXT STRING NOT NULL,
 523         timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
 524         data STRING TEXT
 525       );
 526 CREATE TABLE reactions(
 527         conversationId STRING,
 528         emoji STRING,
 529         fromId STRING,
 530         messageReceivedAt INTEGER,
 531         targetAuthorAci STRING,
 532         targetTimestamp INTEGER,
 533         unread INTEGER
 534       , messageId STRING);
 535 CREATE TABLE senderKeys(
 536         id TEXT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
 537         senderId TEXT NOT NULL,
 538         distributionId TEXT NOT NULL,
 539         data BLOB NOT NULL,
 540         lastUpdatedDate NUMBER NOT NULL
 541       );
 542 CREATE TABLE unprocessed(
 543         id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 544         timestamp INTEGER,
 545         version INTEGER,
 546         attempts INTEGER,
 547         envelope TEXT,
 548         decrypted TEXT,
 549         source TEXT,
 550         serverTimestamp INTEGER,
 551         sourceServiceId STRING
 552       , serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, receivedAtCounter INTEGER, urgent INTEGER, story INTEGER);
 553 CREATE TABLE sendLogPayloads(
 554         id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 555
 556         timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
 557         contentHint INTEGER NOT NULL,
 558         proto BLOB NOT NULL
 559       , urgent INTEGER, hasPniSignatureMessage INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL);
 560 CREATE TABLE sendLogRecipients(
 561         payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
 562
 563         recipientServiceId STRING NOT NULL,
 564         deviceId INTEGER NOT NULL,
 565
 566         PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, recipientServiceId, deviceId),
 567
 568         CONSTRAINT sendLogRecipientsForeignKey
 569           FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
 570           REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
 571           ON DELETE CASCADE
 572       );
 573 CREATE TABLE sendLogMessageIds(
 574         payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
 575
 576         messageId STRING NOT NULL,
 577
 578         PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, messageId),
 579
 580         CONSTRAINT sendLogMessageIdsForeignKey
 581           FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
 582           REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
 583           ON DELETE CASCADE
 584       );
 585 CREATE TABLE preKeys(
 586         id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 587         json TEXT
 588       , ourServiceId NUMBER
 589         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
 590 CREATE TABLE signedPreKeys(
 591         id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 592         json TEXT
 593       , ourServiceId NUMBER
 594         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
 595 CREATE TABLE badges(
 596         id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 597         category TEXT NOT NULL,
 598         name TEXT NOT NULL,
 599         descriptionTemplate TEXT NOT NULL
 600       );
 601 CREATE TABLE badgeImageFiles(
 602         badgeId TEXT REFERENCES badges(id)
 603           ON DELETE CASCADE
 604           ON UPDATE CASCADE,
 605         'order' INTEGER NOT NULL,
 606         url TEXT NOT NULL,
 607         localPath TEXT,
 608         theme TEXT NOT NULL
 609       );
 610 CREATE TABLE storyReads (
 611         authorId STRING NOT NULL,
 612         conversationId STRING NOT NULL,
 613         storyId STRING NOT NULL,
 614         storyReadDate NUMBER NOT NULL,
 615
 616         PRIMARY KEY (authorId, storyId)
 617       );
 618 CREATE TABLE storyDistributions(
 619         id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
 620         name TEXT,
 621
 622         senderKeyInfoJson STRING
 623       , deletedAtTimestamp INTEGER, allowsReplies INTEGER, isBlockList INTEGER, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync INTEGER);
 624 CREATE TABLE storyDistributionMembers(
 625         listId STRING NOT NULL REFERENCES storyDistributions(id)
 626           ON DELETE CASCADE
 627           ON UPDATE CASCADE,
 628         serviceId STRING NOT NULL,
 629
 630         PRIMARY KEY (listId, serviceId)
 631       );
 632 CREATE TABLE uninstalled_sticker_packs (
 633         id STRING NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
 634         uninstalledAt NUMBER NOT NULL,
 635         storageID STRING,
 636         storageVersion NUMBER,
 637         storageUnknownFields BLOB,
 638         storageNeedsSync INTEGER NOT NULL
 639       );
 640 CREATE TABLE groupCallRingCancellations(
 641         ringId INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
 642         createdAt INTEGER NOT NULL
 643       );
 644 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_data'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, block BLOB);
 645 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_idx'(segid, term, pgno, PRIMARY KEY(segid, term)) WITHOUT ROWID;
 646 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_content'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, c0);
 647 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_docsize'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, sz BLOB);
 648 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_config'(k PRIMARY KEY, v) WITHOUT ROWID;
 649 CREATE TABLE edited_messages(
 650         messageId STRING REFERENCES messages(id)
 651           ON DELETE CASCADE,
 652         sentAt INTEGER,
 653         readStatus INTEGER
 654       , conversationId STRING);
 655 CREATE TABLE mentions (
 656         messageId REFERENCES messages(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
 657         mentionAci STRING,
 658         start INTEGER,
 659         length INTEGER
 660       );
 661 CREATE TABLE kyberPreKeys(
 662         id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
 663         json TEXT NOT NULL, ourServiceId NUMBER
 664         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
 665 CREATE TABLE callsHistory (
 666         callId TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 667         peerId TEXT NOT NULL, -- conversation id (legacy) | uuid | groupId | roomId
 668         ringerId TEXT DEFAULT NULL, -- ringer uuid
 669         mode TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Direct" | "Group"
 670         type TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Audio" | "Video" | "Group"
 671         direction TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Incoming" | "Outgoing
 672         -- Direct: enum "Pending" | "Missed" | "Accepted" | "Deleted"
 673         -- Group: enum "GenericGroupCall" | "OutgoingRing" | "Ringing" | "Joined" | "Missed" | "Declined" | "Accepted" | "Deleted"
 674         status TEXT NOT NULL,
 675         timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
 676         UNIQUE (callId, peerId) ON CONFLICT FAIL
 677       );
 678 [ dropped all indexes to save space in this blog post ]
 679 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_view_once_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
 680       WHEN
 681         new.body IS NOT NULL AND new.isViewOnce = 1
 682       BEGIN
 683         DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
 684       END;
 685 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert AFTER INSERT ON messages
 686       WHEN new.isViewOnce IS NOT 1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
 687       BEGIN
 688         INSERT INTO messages_fts
 689           (rowid, body)
 690         VALUES
 691           (new.rowid, new.body);
 692       END;
 693 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_delete AFTER DELETE ON messages BEGIN
 694         DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
 695         DELETE FROM sendLogPayloads WHERE id IN (
 696           SELECT payloadId FROM sendLogMessageIds
 697           WHERE messageId = old.id
 698         );
 699         DELETE FROM reactions WHERE rowid IN (
 700           SELECT rowid FROM reactions
 701           WHERE messageId = old.id
 702         );
 703         DELETE FROM storyReads WHERE storyId = old.storyId;
 704       END;
 705 CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE messages_fts USING fts5(
 706         body,
 707         tokenize = 'signal_tokenizer'
 708       );
 709 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
 710       WHEN
 711         (new.body IS NULL OR old.body IS NOT new.body) AND
 712          new.isViewOnce IS NOT 1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
 713       BEGIN
 714         DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
 715         INSERT INTO messages_fts
 716           (rowid, body)
 717         VALUES
 718           (new.rowid, new.body);
 719       END;
 720 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert_insert_mentions AFTER INSERT ON messages
 721       BEGIN
 722         INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
 723
 724     SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' as mentionAci,
 725       bodyRanges.value ->> 'start' as start,
 726       bodyRanges.value ->> 'length' as length
 727     FROM messages, json_each(messages.json ->> 'bodyRanges') as bodyRanges
 728     WHERE bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' IS NOT NULL
 729
 730         AND messages.id = new.id;
 731       END;
 732 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update_update_mentions AFTER UPDATE ON messages
 733       BEGIN
 734         DELETE FROM mentions WHERE messageId = new.id;
 735         INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
 736
 737     SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' as mentionAci,
 738       bodyRanges.value ->> 'start' as start,
 739       bodyRanges.value ->> 'length' as length
 740     FROM messages, json_each(messages.json ->> 'bodyRanges') as bodyRanges
 741     WHERE bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' IS NOT NULL
 742
 743         AND messages.id = new.id;
 744       END;
 745 sqlite>
 746 </pre>
 747
 748 <p>Finally I have the tool needed to inspect and process Signal
 749 messages that I need, without using the vendor provided client.  Now
 750 on to transforming it to a more useful format.</p>
 751
 752 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 753 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 754 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 755
 756       </div>
 757       <div class="tags">
 758
 759
 760         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 761
 762
 763       </div>
 764     </div>
 765     <div class="padding"></div>
 766
 767     <div class="entry">
 768       <div class="title">
 769         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_17.html">New chrpath release 0.17</a>
 770       </div>
 771       <div class="date">
 772         10th November 2023
 773       </div>
 774       <div class="body">
 775         <p>The chrpath package provide a simple command line tool to remove or
 776 modify the rpath or runpath of compiled ELF program.  It is almost 10
 777 years since I updated the code base, but I stumbled over the tool
 778 today, and decided it was time to move the code base from Subversion
 779 to git and find a new home for it, as the previous one (Debian Alioth)
 780 has been shut down.  I decided to go with
 781 <a href="https://codeberg.org/">Codeberg</a> this time, as it is my git
 782 service of choice these days, did a quick and dirty migration to git
 783 and updated the code with a few patches I found in the Debian bug
 784 tracker.  These are the release notes:</p>
 785
 786 <p>New in 0.17 released 2023-11-10:</p>
 787
 788 <ul>
 789 <li>Moved project to Codeberg, as Alioth is shut down.</li>
 790 <li>Add Solaris support (use &lt;sys/byteorder.h> instead of &lt;byteswap.h>).
 791    Patch from Rainer Orth.</li>
 792 <li>Added missing newline from printf() line.  Patch from Frank Dana.</li>
 793 <li>Corrected handling of multiple ELF sections. Patch from Frank Dana.</li>
 794 <li>Updated build rules for .deb.  Partly based on patch from djcj.</li>
 795 </ul>
 796
 797 <p>The latest edition is tagged and available from
 798 <a href="https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath">https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath</a>.
 799
 800 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 801 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 802 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 803
 804       </div>
 805       <div class="tags">
 806
 807
 808         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 809
 810
 811       </div>
 812     </div>
 813     <div class="padding"></div>
 814
 815     <div class="entry">
 816       <div class="title">
 817         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Test_framework_for_DocBook_processors___formatters.html">Test framework for DocBook processors / formatters</a>
 818       </div>
 819       <div class="date">
 820          5th November 2023
 821       </div>
 822       <div class="body">
 823         <p>All the books I have published so far has been using
 824 <a href="https://docbook.org/">DocBook</a> somewhere in the process.
 825 For the first book, the source format was DocBook, while for every
 826 later book it was an intermediate format used as the stepping stone to
 827 be able to present the same manuscript in several formats, on paper,
 828 as ebook in ePub format, as a HTML page and as a PDF file either for
 829 paper production or for Internet consumption.  This is made possible
 830 with a wide variety of free software tools with DocBook support in
 831 Debian.  The source format of later books have been docx via rst,
 832 Markdown, Filemaker and Asciidoc, and for all of these I was able to
 833 generate a suitable DocBook file for further processing using
 834 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pandoc">pandoc</a>,
 835 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoc">a2x</a> and
 836 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoctor">asciidoctor</a>,
 837 as well as rendering using
 838 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xmlto">xmlto</a>,
 839 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dbtoepub">dbtoepub</a>,
 840 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dblatex">dblatex</a>,
 841 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/docbook-xsl">docbook-xsl</a> and
 842 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fop">fop</a>.</p>
 843
 844 <p>Most of the <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/">books I
 845 have published</a> are translated books, with English as the source
 846 language.  The use of
 847 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/po4a">po4a</a> to
 848 handle translations using the gettext PO format has been a blessing,
 849 but publishing translated books had triggered the need to ensure the
 850 DocBook tools handle relevant languages correctly.  For every new
 851 language I have published, I had to submit patches dblatex, dbtoepub
 852 and docbook-xsl fixing incorrect language and country specific issues
 853 in the framework themselves.  Typically this has been missing keywords
 854 like 'figure' or sort ordering of index entries.  After a while it
 855 became tiresome to only discover issues like this by accident, and I
 856 decided to write a DocBook "test framework" exercising various
 857 features of DocBook and allowing me to see all features exercised for
 858 a given language.  It consist of a set of DocBook files, a version 4
 859 book, a version 5 book, a v4 book set, a v4 selection of problematic
 860 tables, one v4 testing sidefloat and finally one v4 testing a book of
 861 articles.  The DocBook files are accompanied with a set of build rules
 862 for building PDF using dblatex and docbook-xsl/fop, HTML using xmlto
 863 or docbook-xsl and epub using dbtoepub.  The result is a set of files
 864 visualizing footnotes, indexes, table of content list, figures,
 865 formulas and other DocBook features, allowing for a quick review on
 866 the completeness of the given locale settings.  To build with a
 867 different language setting, all one need to do is edit the lang= value
 868 in the .xml file to pick a different ISO 639 code value and run
 869 'make'.</p>
 870
 871 <p>The <a href="https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/">test framework
 872 source code</a> is available from Codeberg, and a generated set of
 873 presentations of the various examples is available as Codeberg static
 874 web pages at
 875 <a href="https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/">https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/</a>.
 876 Using this test framework I have been able to discover and report
 877 several bugs and missing features in various tools, and got a lot of
 878 them fixed.  For example I got Northern Sami keywords added to both
 879 docbook-xsl and dblatex, fixed several typos in Norwegian bokmål and
 880 Norwegian Nynorsk, support for non-ascii title IDs added to pandoc,
 881 Norwegian index sorting support fixed in xindy and initial Norwegian
 882 Bokmål support added to dblatex.  Some issues still remains, though.
 883 Default index sorting rules are still broken in several tools, so the
 884 Norwegian letters æ, ø and å are more often than not sorted properly
 885 in the book index.</p>
 886
 887 <p>The test framework recently received some more polish, as part of
 888 publishing my latest book.  This book contained a lot of fairly
 889 complex tables, which exposed bugs in some of the tools.  This made me
 890 add a new test file with various tables, as well as spend some time to
 891 brush up the build rules.  My goal is for the test framework to
 892 exercise all DocBook features to make it easier to see which features
 893 work with different processors, and hopefully get them all to support
 894 the full set of DocBook features.  Feel free to send patches to extend
 895 the test set, and test it with your favorite DocBook processor.
 896 Please visit these two URLs to learn more:</p>
 897
 898 <ul>
 899 <li><a href="https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/">https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/</a></li>
 900 <li><a href="https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/">https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/</a></li>
 901 </ul>
 902
 903 <p>If you want to learn more on Docbook and translations, I recommend
 904 having a look at the <a href="https://docbook.org/">the DocBook
 905 web site</a>,
 906 <a href="https://doccookbook.sourceforge.net/html/en/">the DoCookBook
 907 site<a/> and my earlier blog post on
 908 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">how
 909 the Skolelinux project process and translate documentation</a>,  a talk I gave earlier this year on
 910 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20230314-oversetting-og-publisering-av-b%c3%b8ker-med-fri-programvare/">how
 911 to translate and publish books using free software</a> (Norwegian
 912 only).</p>
 913
 914 <!--
 915
 916 https://github.com/docbook/xslt10-stylesheets/issues/205 (docbook-xsl: sme support)
 917 https://bugs.debian.org/968437 (xindy: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
 918 https://bugs.debian.org/856123 (pandoc: markdown to docbook with non-english titles)
 919 https://bugs.debian.org/864813 (dblatex: missing nb words)
 920 https://bugs.debian.org/756386 (dblatex: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
 921 https://bugs.debian.org/796871 (dbtoepub: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
 922 https://bugs.debian.org/792616 (dblatex: PDF metadata)
 923 https://bugs.debian.org/686908 (docbook-xsl: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
 924 https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=373747&aid=3556630&group_id=21935 (docbook-xsl: nb/nn support)
 925 https://bugs.debian.org/684391 (dblatex: initial nb support)
 926
 927 -->
 928
 929 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 930 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 931 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 932
 933       </div>
 934       <div class="tags">
 935
 936
 937         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 938
 939
 940       </div>
 941     </div>
 942     <div class="padding"></div>
 943
 944     <div class="entry">
 945       <div class="title">
 946         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html">What did I learn from OpenSnitch this summer?</a>
 947       </div>
 948       <div class="date">
 949         11th June 2023
 950       </div>
 951       <div class="body">
 952         <p>With yesterdays
 953 <a href="https://www.debian.org/News/2023/20230610">release of Debian
 954 12 Bookworm</a>, I am happy to know the
 955 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
 956 application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is available for a wider audience.
 957 I have been running it for a few weeks now, and have been surprised
 958 about some of the programs connecting to the Internet.  Some programs
 959 are obviously calling out from my machine, like the NTP network based
 960 clock adjusting system and Tor to reach other Tor clients, but others
 961 were more dubious.  For example, the KDE Window manager try to look up
 962 the host name in DNS, for no apparent reason, but if this lookup is
 963 blocked the KDE desktop get periodically stuck when I use it.  Another
 964 surprise was how much Firefox call home directly to mozilla.com,
 965 mozilla.net and googleapis.com, to mention a few, when I visit other
 966 web pages.  This direct connection happen even if I told Firefox to
 967 always use a proxy, and the proxy setting is ignored for this traffic.
 968 Other surprising connections come from audacity and dirmngr (I do not
 969 use Gnome).  It took some trial and error to get a good default set of
 970 permissions.  Without it, I would get popups asking for permissions at
 971 any time, also the most inconvenient ones where I am in the middle of
 972 a time sensitive gaming session.</p>
 973
 974 <p>I suspect some application developers should rethink when then need
 975 to use network connections or DNS lookups, and recommend testing
 976 OpenSnitch (only <tt>apt install opensnitch</tt> away in Debian
 977 Bookworm) to locate and report any surprising Internet connections on
 978 your desktop machine.</p>
 979
 980 <p>At the moment the upstream developer and Debian package maintainer
 981 is working on making the system more reliable in Debian, by enabling
 982 the eBPF kernel module to track processes and connections instead of
 983 depending in content in /proc/.  This should enter unstable fairly
 984 soon.</p>
 985
 986 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 987 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 988 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 989
 990 <p><strong>Update 2023-06-12</strong>: I got a tip about
 991 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues">a list of privacy
 992 issues in Free Software</a> and the
 993 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-privacy">#debian-privacy IRC
 994 channel</a> discussing these topics.</p>
 995
 996
 997       </div>
 998       <div class="tags">
 999
1000
1001         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
1002
1003
1004       </div>
1005     </div>
1006     <div class="padding"></div>
1007
1008     <div class="entry">
1009       <div class="title">
1010         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html">wmbusmeters, parse data from your utility meter - nice free software</a>
1011       </div>
1012       <div class="date">
1013         19th May 2023
1014       </div>
1015       <div class="body">
1016         <p>There is a European standard for reading utility meters like water,
1017 gas, electricity or heat distribution meters.  The
1018 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter-Bus">Meter-Bus standard
1019 (EN 13757-2, EN 13757-3 and EN 13757–4)</a> provide a cross vendor way
1020 to talk to and collect meter data.  I ran into this standard when I
1021 wanted to monitor some heat distribution meters, and managed to find
1022 free software that could do the job.  The meters in question broadcast
1023 encrypted messages with meter information via radio, and the hardest
1024 part was to track down the encryption keys from the vendor.  With this
1025 in place I could set up a MQTT gateway to submit the meter data for
1026 graphing.</p>
1027
1028 <p>The free software systems in question,
1029 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rtl-wmbus">rtl-wmbus</a> to
1030 read the messages from a software defined radio, and
1031 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/wmbusmeters">wmbusmeters</a> to
1032 decrypt and decode the content of the messages, is working very well
1033 and allowe me to get frequent updates from my meters.  I got in touch
1034 with upstream last year to see if there was any interest in publishing
1035 the packages via Debian.  I was very happy to learn that Fredrik
1036 Öhrström volunteered to maintain the packages, and I have since
1037 assisted him in getting Debian package build rules in place as well as
1038 sponsoring the packages into the Debian archive.  Sadly we completed
1039 it too late for them to become part of the next stable Debian release
1040 (Bookworm).  The wmbusmeters package just cleared the NEW queue.  It
1041 will need some work to fix a built problem, but I expect Fredrik will
1042 find a solution soon.</p>
1043
1044 <p>If you got a infrastructure meter supporting the Meter Bus
1045 standard, I strongly recommend having a look at these nice
1046 packages.</p>
1047
1048 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1049 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1050 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1051
1052       </div>
1053       <div class="tags">
1054
1055
1056         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1057
1058
1059       </div>
1060     </div>
1061     <div class="padding"></div>
1062
1063     <div class="entry">
1064       <div class="title">
1065         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">The 2023 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</a>
1066       </div>
1067       <div class="date">
1068         14th May 2023
1069       </div>
1070       <div class="body">
1071         <p>The LinuxCNC project is making headway these days.  A lot of
1072 patches and issues have seen activity on
1073 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/">the project github
1074 pages</a> recently.  A few weeks ago there was a developer gathering
1075 over at the <a href="https://tormach.com/">Tormach</a> headquarter in
1076 Wisconsin, and now we are planning a new gathering in Norway.  If you
1077 wonder what LinuxCNC is, lets quote Wikipedia:</p>
1078
1079 <blockquote>
1080 "LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
1081 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
1082 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
1083 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
1084 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
1085 interactive development)."
1086 </blockquote>
1087
1088 <p>The Norwegian developer gathering take place the weekend June 16th
1089 to 18th this year, and is open for everyone interested in contributing
1090 to LinuxCNC.  Up to date information about the gathering can be found
1091 in
1092 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/sa64jp06nob.fsf%40hjemme.reinholdtsen.name/#msg37837251">the
1093 developer mailing list thread</a> where the gathering was announced.
1094 Thanks to the good people at
1095 <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>,
1096 <a href="https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill-Linpro</a> and
1097 <a href="https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/">NUUG Foundation</a>, we
1098 have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and shelter for the people
1099 traveling from afar to join us.  If you would like to join the
1100 gathering, get in touch.</p>
1101
1102 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1103 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1104 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1105
1106       </div>
1107       <div class="tags">
1108
1109
1110         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>.
1111
1112
1113       </div>
1114     </div>
1115     <div class="padding"></div>
1116
1117     <div class="entry">
1118       <div class="title">
1119         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html">OpenSnitch in Debian ready for prime time</a>
1120       </div>
1121       <div class="date">
1122         13th May 2023
1123       </div>
1124       <div class="body">
1125         <p>A bit delayed,
1126 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
1127 application firewall OpenSnitch</a> package in Debian now got the
1128 latest fixes ready for Debian Bookworm.  Because it depend on a
1129 package missing on some architectures, the autopkgtest check of the
1130 testing migration script did not understand that the tests were
1131 actually working, so the migration was delayed.  A bug in the package
1132 dependencies is also fixed, so those installing the firewall package
1133 (opensnitch) now also get the GUI admin tool (python3-opensnitch-ui)
1134 installed by default.  I am very grateful to Gustavo Iñiguez Goya for
1135 his work on getting the package ready for Debian Bookworm.</p>
1136
1137 <p>Armed with this package I have discovered some surprising
1138 connections from programs I believed were able to work completly
1139 offline, and it has already proven its worth, at least to me.  If you
1140 too want to get more familiar with the kind of programs using
1141 Internett connections on your machine, I recommend testing <tt>apt
1142 install opensnitch</tt> in Bookworm and see what you think.</p>
1143
1144 <p>The package is still not able to build its eBPF module within
1145 Debian.  Not sure how much work it would be to get it working, but
1146 suspect some kernel related packages need to be extended with more
1147 header files to get it working.</p>
1148
1149 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1150 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1151 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1152
1153       </div>
1154       <div class="tags">
1155
1156
1157         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
1158
1159
1160       </div>
1161     </div>
1162     <div class="padding"></div>
1163
1164     <div class="entry">
1165       <div class="title">
1166         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html">Speech to text, she APTly whispered, how hard can it be?</a>
1167       </div>
1168       <div class="date">
1169         23rd April 2023
1170       </div>
1171       <div class="body">
1172         <p>While visiting a convention during Easter, it occurred to me that
1173 it would be great if I could have a digital Dictaphone with
1174 transcribing capabilities, providing me with texts to cut-n-paste into
1175 stuff I need to write.  The background is that long drives often bring
1176 up the urge to write on texts I am working on, which of course is out
1177 of the question while driving.  With the release of
1178 <a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/">OpenAI Whisper</a>, this
1179 seem to be within reach with Free Software, so I decided to give it a
1180 go.  OpenAI Whisper is a Linux based neural network system to read in
1181 audio files and provide text representation of the speech in that
1182 audio recording.  It handle multiple languages and according to its
1183 creators even can translate into a different language than the spoken
1184 one.  I have not tested the latter feature.  It can either use the CPU
1185 or a GPU with CUDA support.  As far as I can tell, CUDA in practice
1186 limit that feature to NVidia graphics cards.  I have few of those, as
1187 they do not work great with free software drivers, and have not tested
1188 the GPU option.  While looking into the matter, I did discover some
1189 work to provide CUDA support on non-NVidia GPUs, and some work with
1190 the library used by Whisper to port it to other GPUs, but have not
1191 spent much time looking into GPU support yet.  I've so far used an old
1192 X220 laptop as my test machine, and only transcribed using its
1193 CPU.</p>
1194
1195 <p>As it from a privacy standpoint is unthinkable to use computers
1196 under control of someone else (aka a "cloud" service) to transcribe
1197 ones thoughts and personal notes, I want to run the transcribing
1198 system locally on my own computers.  The only sensible approach to me
1199 is to make the effort I put into this available for any Linux user and
1200 to upload the needed packages into Debian.  Looking at Debian Bookworm, I
1201 discovered that only three packages were missing,
1202 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034307">tiktoken</a>,
1203 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034144">triton</a>, and
1204 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034091">openai-whisper</a>.  For a while
1205 I also believed
1206 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034286">ffmpeg-python</a> was
1207 needed, but as its
1208 <a href="https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python/issues/760">upstream
1209 seem to have vanished</a> I found it safer
1210 <a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1242">to rewrite
1211 whisper</a> to stop depending on in than to introduce ffmpeg-python
1212 into Debian.  I decided to place these packages under the umbrella of
1213 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team">the Debian Deep
1214 Learning Team</a>, which seem like the best team to look after such
1215 packages.  Discussing the topic within the group also made me aware
1216 that the triton package was already a future dependency of newer
1217 versions of the torch package being planned, and would be needed after
1218 Bookworm is released.</p>
1219
1220 <p>All required code packages have been now waiting in
1221 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the Debian NEW
1222 queue</a> since Wednesday, heading for Debian Experimental until
1223 Bookworm is released.  An unsolved issue is how to handle the neural
1224 network models used by Whisper.  The default behaviour of Whisper is
1225 to require Internet connectivity and download the model requested to
1226 <tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt> on first invocation.  This obviously would
1227 fail <a href="https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html">the
1228 deserted island test of free software</a> as the Debian packages would
1229 be unusable for someone stranded with only the Debian archive and solar
1230 powered computer on a deserted island.</p>
1231
1232 <p>Because of this, I would love to include the models in the Debian
1233 mirror system.  This is problematic, as the models are very large
1234 files, which would put a heavy strain on the Debian mirror
1235 infrastructure around the globe.  The strain would be even higher if
1236 the models change often, which luckily as far as I can tell they do
1237 not.  The small model, which according to its creator is most useful
1238 for English and in my experience is not doing a great job there
1239 either, is 462 MiB (deb is 414 MiB).  The medium model, which to me
1240 seem to handle English speech fairly well is 1.5 GiB (deb is 1.3 GiB)
1241 and the large model is 2.9 GiB (deb is 2.6 GiB).  I would assume
1242 everyone with enough resources would prefer to use the large model for
1243 highest quality.  I believe the models themselves would have to go
1244 into the non-free part of the Debian archive, as they are not really
1245 including any useful source code for updating the models.  The
1246 "source", aka the model training set, according to the creators
1247 consist of "680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised
1248 data collected from the web", which to me reads material with both
1249 unknown copyright terms, unavailable to the general public.  In other
1250 words, the source is not available according to the Debian Free
1251 Software Guidelines and the model should be considered non-free.</p>
1252
1253 <p>I asked the Debian FTP masters for advice regarding uploading a
1254 model package on their IRC channel, and based on the feedback there it
1255 is still unclear to me if such package would be accepted into the
1256 archive.  In any case I wrote build rules for a
1257 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/openai-whisper-model">OpenAI
1258 Whisper model package</a> and
1259 <a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1257">modified the
1260 Whisper code base</a> to prefer shared files under <tt>/usr/</tt> and
1261 <tt>/var/</tt> over user specific files in <tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt>
1262 to be able to use these model packages, to prepare for such
1263 possibility.  One solution might be to include only one of the models
1264 (small or medium, I guess) in the Debian archive, and ask people to
1265 download the others from the Internet.  Not quite sure what to do
1266 here, and advice is most welcome (use the debian-ai mailing list).</p>
1267
1268 <p>To make it easier to test the new packages while I wait for them to
1269 clear the NEW queue, I created an APT source targeting bookworm.  I
1270 selected Bookworm instead of Bullseye, even though I know the latter
1271 would reach more users, is that some of the required dependencies are
1272 missing from Bullseye and I during this phase of testing did not want
1273 to backport a lot of packages just to get up and running.</p>
1274
1275 <p>Here is a recipe to run as user root if you want to test OpenAI
1276 Whisper using Debian packages on your Debian Bookworm installation,
1277 first adding the APT repository GPG key to the list of trusted keys,
1278 then setting up the APT repository and finally installing the packages
1279 and one of the models:</p>
1280
1281 <p><pre>
1282 curl https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/D78F5C4796F353D211B119E28200D9B589641240.asc \
1283   -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pere-whisper.asc
1284 mkdir -p /etc/apt/sources.list.d
1285 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pere-whisper.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1286 deb https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
1287 deb-src https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
1288 EOF
1289 apt update
1290 apt install openai-whisper
1291 </pre></p>
1292
1293 <p>The package work for me, but have not yet been tested on any other
1294 computer than my own.  With it, I have been able to (badly) transcribe
1295 a 2 minute 40 second Norwegian audio clip to test using the small
1296 model.  This took 11 minutes and around 2.2 GiB of RAM.  Transcribing
1297 the same file with the medium model gave a accurate text in 77 minutes
1298 using around 5.2 GiB of RAM.  My test machine had too little memory to
1299 test the large model, which I believe require 11 GiB of RAM.  In
1300 short, this now work for me using Debian packages, and I hope it will
1301 for you and everyone else once the packages enter Debian.</p>
1302
1303 <p>Now I can start on the audio recording part of this project.</p>
1304
1305 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1306 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1307 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1308
1309       </div>
1310       <div class="tags">
1311
1312
1313         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1314
1315
1316       </div>
1317     </div>
1318     <div class="padding"></div>
1319
1320     <div class="entry">
1321       <div class="title">
1322         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html">rtlsdr-scanner, software defined radio frequency scanner for Linux  - nice free software</a>
1323       </div>
1324       <div class="date">
1325          7th April 2023
1326       </div>
1327       <div class="body">
1328         <p>Today I finally found time to track down a useful radio frequency
1329 scanner for my software defined radio.  Just for fun I tried to locate
1330 the radios used in the areas, and a good start would be to scan all
1331 the frequencies to see what is in use.  I've tried to find a useful
1332 program earlier, but ran out of time before I managed to find a useful
1333 tool.  This time I was more successful, and after a few false leads I
1334 found a description of
1335 <a href="https://www.kali.org/tools/rtlsdr-scanner/">rtlsdr-scanner
1336 over at the Kali site</a>, and was able to track down
1337 <a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/rtlsdr-scanner.git">the
1338 Kali package git repository</a> to build a deb package for the
1339 scanner.  Sadly the package is missing from the Debian project itself,
1340 at least in Debian Bullseye.  Two runtime dependencies,
1341 <a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-visvis.git">python-visvis</a>
1342 and
1343 <a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-rtlsdr.git">python-rtlsdr</a>
1344 had to be built and installed separately.  Luckily '<tt>gbp
1345 buildpackage</tt>' handled them just fine and no further packages had
1346 to be manually built.  The end result worked out of the box after
1347 installation.</p>
1348
1349 <p>My initial scans for FM channels worked just fine, so I knew the
1350 scanner was functioning.  But when I tried to scan every frequency
1351 from 100 to 1000 MHz, the program stopped unexpectedly near the
1352 completion.  After some debugging I discovered USB software radio I
1353 used rejected frequencies above 948 MHz, triggering a unreported
1354 exception breaking the scan.  Changing the scan to end at 957 worked
1355 better.  I similarly found the lower limit to be around 15, and ended
1356 up with the following full scan:</p>
1357
1358 <p><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png" width="100%"></a></p>
1359
1360 <p>Saving the scan did not work, but exporting it as a CSV file worked
1361 just fine.  I ended up with around 477k CVS lines with dB level for
1362 the given frequency.</p>
1363
1364 <p>The save failure seem to be a missing UTF-8 encoding issue in the
1365 python code.  Will see if I can find time to send a patch
1366 <a href="https://github.com/CdeMills/RTLSDR-Scanner/">upstream</a>
1367 later to fix this exception:</p>
1368
1369 <pre>
1370 Traceback (most recent call last):
1371   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
1372     save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
1373   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
1374     handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
1375 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
1376 Traceback (most recent call last):
1377   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
1378     save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
1379   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
1380     handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
1381 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
1382 </pre>
1383
1384 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1385 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1386 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1387
1388       </div>
1389       <div class="tags">
1390
1391
1392         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1393
1394
1395       </div>
1396     </div>
1397     <div class="padding"></div>
1398
1399     <div class="entry">
1400       <div class="title">
1401         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html">OpenSnitch available in Debian Sid and Bookworm</a>
1402       </div>
1403       <div class="date">
1404         25th February 2023
1405       </div>
1406       <div class="body">
1407         <p>Thanks to the efforts of the OpenSnitch lead developer Gustavo
1408 Iñiguez Goya allowing me to sponsor the upload,
1409 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
1410 application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is now available in Debian
1411 Testing, soon to become the next stable release of Debian.</p>
1412
1413 <p>This is a package which set up a network firewall on one or more
1414 machines, which is controlled by a graphical user interface that will
1415 ask the user if a program should be allowed to connect to the local
1416 network or the Internet.  If some background daemon is trying to dial
1417 home, it can be blocked from doing so with a simple mouse click, or by
1418 default simply by not doing anything when the GUI question dialog pop
1419 up.  A list of all programs discovered using the network is provided
1420 in the GUI, giving the user an overview of how the machine(s) programs
1421 use the network.</p>
1422
1423 <p>OpenSnitch was uploaded for NEW processing about a month ago, and I
1424 had little hope of it getting accepted and shaping up in time for the
1425 package freeze, but the Debian ftpmasters proved to be amazingly quick
1426 at checking out the package and it was accepted into the archive about
1427 week after the first upload.  It is now team maintained under the Go
1428 language team umbrella.  A few fixes to the default setup is only in
1429 Sid, and should migrate to Testing/Bookworm in a week.</p>
1430
1431 <p>During testing I ran into an
1432 <a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/813">issue
1433 with Minecraft server broadcasts disappearing</a>, which was quickly
1434 resolved by the developer with a patch and a proposed configuration
1435 change.  I've been told this was caused by the Debian packages default
1436 use if /proc/ information to track down kernel status, instead of the
1437 newer eBPF module that can be used.  The reason is simply that
1438 upstream and I have failed to find a way to build the eBPF modules for
1439 OpenSnitch without a complete configured Linux kernel source tree,
1440 which as far as we can tell is unavailable as a build dependency in
1441 Debian.  We tried unsuccessfully so far to use the kernel-headers
1442 package.  It would be great if someone could provide some clues how to
1443 build eBPF modules on build daemons in Debian, possibly without the full
1444 kernel source.</p>
1445
1446 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1447 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1448 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1449
1450       </div>
1451       <div class="tags">
1452
1453
1454         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
1455
1456
1457       </div>
1458     </div>
1459     <div class="padding"></div>
1460
1461     <div class="entry">
1462       <div class="title">
1463         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_the_desktop_recommending_your_program_for_opening_its_files_.html">Is the desktop recommending your program for opening its files?</a>
1464       </div>
1465       <div class="date">
1466         29th January 2023
1467       </div>
1468       <div class="body">
1469         <p>Linux desktop systems
1470 <a href="https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html">have
1471 standardized</a> how programs present themselves to the desktop
1472 system.  If a package include a .desktop file in
1473 /usr/share/applications/, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Xfce and the other desktop
1474 environments will pick up the file and use its content to generate the
1475 menu of available programs in the system.  A lesser known fact is that
1476 a package can also explain to the desktop system how to recognize the
1477 files created by the program in question, and use it to open these
1478 files on request, for example via a GUI file browser.</p>
1479
1480 <p>A while back I ran into a package that did not tell the desktop
1481 system how to recognize its files and was not used to open its files
1482 in the file browser and fixed it.  In the process I wrote a simple
1483 debian/tests/ script to ensure the setup keep working.  It might be
1484 useful for other packages too, to ensure any future version of the
1485 package keep handling its own files.</p>
1486
1487 <p>For this to work the file format need a useful MIME type that can
1488 be used to identify the format.  If the file format do not yet have a
1489 MIME type, it should define one and preferably also
1490 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">register
1491 it with IANA</a> to ensure the MIME type string is reserved.</p>
1492
1493 <p>The script uses the <tt>xdg-mime</tt> program from xdg-utils to
1494 query the database of standardized package information and ensure it
1495 return sensible values.  It also need the location of an example file
1496 for xdg-mime to guess the format of.</p>
1497
1498 <pre>
1499 #!/bin/sh
1500 #
1501 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
1502 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice.
1503 #
1504 # Validate the MIME setup, making sure motor types have
1505 # application/vnd.openmotor+yaml associated with them and is connected
1506 # to the openmotor desktop file.
1507
1508 retval=0
1509
1510 mimetype="application/vnd.openmotor+yaml"
1511 testfile="test/data/real/o3100/motor.ric"
1512 mydesktopfile="openmotor.desktop"
1513
1514 filemime="$(xdg-mime query filetype "$testfile")"
1515
1516 if [ "$mimetype" != "$filemime" ] ; then
1517     retval=1
1518     echo "error: xdg-mime claim motor file MIME type is $filemine, not $mimetype"
1519 else
1520     echo "success: xdg-mime report correct mime type $mimetype for motor file"
1521 fi
1522
1523 desktop=$(xdg-mime query default "$mimetype")
1524
1525 if [ "$mydesktopfile" != "$desktop" ]; then
1526     retval=1
1527     echo "error: xdg-mime claim motor file should be handled by $desktop, not $mydesktopfile"
1528 else
1529     echo "success: xdg-mime agree motor file should be handled by $mydesktopfile"
1530 fi
1531
1532 exit $retval
1533 </pre>
1534
1535 <p>It is a simple way to ensure your users are not very surprised when
1536 they try to open one of your file formats in their file browser.</p>
1537
1538 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1539 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1540 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1541
1542       </div>
1543       <div class="tags">
1544
1545
1546         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1547
1548
1549       </div>
1550     </div>
1551     <div class="padding"></div>
1552
1553     <div class="entry">
1554       <div class="title">
1555         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Opensnitch__the_application_level_interactive_firewall__heading_into_the_Debian_archive.html">Opensnitch, the application level interactive firewall, heading into the Debian archive</a>
1556       </div>
1557       <div class="date">
1558         22nd January 2023
1559       </div>
1560       <div class="body">
1561         <p>While reading a
1562 <a href="https://sneak.berlin/20230115/macos-scans-your-local-files-now/">blog
1563 post claiming MacOS X recently started scanning local files and
1564 reporting information about them to Apple</a>, even on a machine where
1565 all such callback features had been disabled, I came across a
1566 description of the Little Snitch application for MacOS X.  It seemed
1567 like a very nice tool to have in the tool box, and I decided to see if
1568 something similar was available for Linux.</p>
1569
1570 <p>It did not take long to find
1571 <a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch">the OpenSnitch
1572 package</a>, which has been in development since 2017, and now is in
1573 version 1.5.0.  It has had a
1574 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/909567">request for Debian
1575 packaging</a> since 2018, but no-one completed the job so far.  Just
1576 for fun, I decided to see if I could help, and I was very happy to
1577 discover that
1578 <a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/304">upstream
1579 want a Debian package too</a>.</p>
1580
1581 <p>After struggling a bit with getting the program to run, figuring
1582 out building Go programs (and a little failed detour to look at eBPF
1583 builds too - help needed), I am very happy to report that I am
1584 sponsoring upstream to maintain the package in Debian, and it has
1585 since this morning been waiting in NEW for the ftpmasters to have a
1586 look.  Perhaps it can get into the archive in time for the Bookworm
1587 release?</p>
1588
1589 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1590 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1591 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1592
1593       </div>
1594       <div class="tags">
1595
1596
1597         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
1598
1599
1600       </div>
1601     </div>
1602     <div class="padding"></div>
1603
1604     <div class="entry">
1605       <div class="title">
1606         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LinuxCNC_MQTT_publisher_component.html">LinuxCNC MQTT publisher component</a>
1607       </div>
1608       <div class="date">
1609          8th January 2023
1610       </div>
1611       <div class="body">
1612         <p>I watched <a href="https://yewtu.be/watch?v=jmKUV3aNLjk">a 2015
1613 video from Andreas Schiffler</a> the other day, where he set up
1614 <a href="https://linuxcnc.org/">LinuxCNC</a> to send status
1615 information to the MQTT broker IBM Bluemix.  As I also use MQTT for
1616 graphing, it occured to me that a generic MQTT LinuxCNC component
1617 would be useful and I set out to implement it.  Today I got the first
1618 draft limping along and submitted as
1619 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/2253">a patch to the
1620 LinuxCNC project</a>.</p>
1621
1622 <p>The simple part was setting up the MQTT publishing code in Python.
1623 I already have set up other parts submitting data to my Mosquito MQTT
1624 broker, so I could reuse that code.  Writing a LinuxCNC component in
1625 Python as new to me, but using existing examples in the code
1626 repository and the extensive documentation, this was fairly straight
1627 forward.  The hardest part was creating a automated test for the
1628 component to ensure it was working.  Testing it in a simulated
1629 LinuxCNC machine proved very useful, as I discovered features I needed
1630 that I had not thought of yet, and adjusted the code quite a bit to
1631 make it easier to test without a operational MQTT broker
1632 available.</p>
1633
1634 <p>The draft is ready and working, but I am unsure which LinuxCNC HAL
1635 pins I should collect and publish by default (in other words, the
1636 default set of information pieces published), and how to get the
1637 machine name from the LinuxCNC INI file.  The latter is a minor
1638 detail, but I expect it would be useful in a setup with several
1639 machines available.  I am hoping for feedback from the experienced
1640 LinuxCNC developers and users, to make the component even better
1641 before it can go into the mainland LinuxCNC code base.</p>
1642
1643 <p>Since I started on the MQTT component, I came across
1644 <a href="https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Bqa2grG0XtA">another video from Kent
1645 VanderVelden</a> where he combine LinuxCNC with a set of screen glasses
1646 controlled by a Raspberry Pi, and it occured to me that it would
1647 be useful for such use cases if LinuxCNC also provided a REST API for
1648 querying its status.  I hope to start on such component once the MQTT
1649 component is working well.</p>
1650
1651 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1652 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1653 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1654
1655       </div>
1656       <div class="tags">
1657
1658
1659         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1660
1661
1662       </div>
1663     </div>
1664     <div class="padding"></div>
1665
1666     <div class="entry">
1667       <div class="title">
1668         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ONVIF_IP_camera_management_tool_finally_in_Debian.html">ONVIF IP camera management tool finally in Debian</a>
1669       </div>
1670       <div class="date">
1671         24th December 2022
1672       </div>
1673       <div class="body">
1674         <p>Merry Christmas to you all.  Here is a small gift to all those with
1675 IP cameras following the <a href="https://www.onvif.org/">ONVIF
1676 specification</a>.  There is finally a nice command line and GUI tool
1677 in Debian to manage ONVIF IP cameras.  After working with upstream for
1678 a few months and sponsoring the upload, I am very happy to report that
1679 the <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/libonvif">libonvif package</a>
1680 entered Debian Sid last night.</p>
1681
1682 <p>The package provide a C library to communicate with such cameras, a
1683 command line tool to locate and update settings of (like password) the
1684 cameras and a GUI tool to configure and control the units as well as
1685 preview the video from the camera.  Libonvif is available on Both
1686 Linux and Windows and the GUI tool uses the Qt library.  The main
1687 competitors are non-free software, while libonvif is GNU GPL licensed.
1688 I am very glad Debian users in the future can control their cameras
1689 using a free software system provided by Debian.  But the ONVIF world
1690 is full of slightly broken firmware, where the cameras pretend to
1691 follow the ONVIF specification but fail to set some configuration
1692 values or refuse to provide video to more than one recipient at the
1693 time, and the onvif project is quite young and might take a while
1694 before it completely work with your camera.  Upstream seem eager to
1695 improve the library, so handling any broken camera might be just <a
1696 href="https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/">a bug report away</a>.</p>
1697
1698 <p>The package just cleared NEW, and need a new source only upload
1699 before it can enter testing.  This will happen in the next few
1700 days.</p>
1701
1702 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1703 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1704 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1705
1706       </div>
1707       <div class="tags">
1708
1709
1710         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1711
1712
1713       </div>
1714     </div>
1715     <div class="padding"></div>
1716
1717     <div class="entry">
1718       <div class="title">
1719         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Managing_and_using_ONVIF_IP_cameras_with_Linux.html">Managing and using ONVIF IP cameras with Linux</a>
1720       </div>
1721       <div class="date">
1722         19th October 2022
1723       </div>
1724       <div class="body">
1725         <p>Recently I have been looking at how to control and collect data
1726 from a handful IP cameras using Linux.  I both wanted to change their
1727 settings and to make their imagery available via a free software
1728 service under my control.  Here is a summary of the tools I found.</p>
1729
1730 <p>First I had to identify the cameras and their protocols.  As far as
1731 I could tell, they were using some SOAP looking protocol and their
1732 internal web server seem to only work with Microsoft Internet Explorer
1733 with some proprietary binary plugin, which in these days of course is
1734 a security disaster and also made it impossible for me to use the
1735 camera web interface.  Luckily I discovered that the SOAP looking
1736 protocol is actually following <a href="https://www.onvif.org/">the
1737 ONVIF specification</a>, which seem to be supported by a lot of IP
1738 cameras these days.</p>
1739
1740 <p>Once the protocol was identified, I was able to find what appear to
1741 be the most popular way to configure ONVIF cameras, the free software
1742 Windows tool named
1743 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/onvifdm/">ONVIF Device
1744 Manager</a>.  Lacking any other options at the time, I tried
1745 unsuccessfully to get it running using Wine, but was missing a dotnet
1746 40 library and I found no way around it to run it on Linux.</p>
1747
1748 <p>The next tool I found to configure the cameras were a non-free Linux Qt
1749 client <a href="https://www.lingodigit.com/onvif_nvcdemo.html">ONVIF
1750 Device Tool</a>.  I did not like its terms of use, so did not spend
1751 much time on it.</p>
1752
1753 <p>To collect the video and make it available in a web interface, I
1754 found the Zoneminder tool in Debian.  A recent version was able to
1755 automatically detect and configure ONVIF devices, so I could use it to
1756 set up motion detection in and collection of the camera output.  I had
1757 initial problems getting the ONVIF autodetection to work, as both
1758 Firefox and Chromium <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1001188">refused
1759 the inter-tab communication</a> being used by the Zoneminder web
1760 pages, but managed to get konqueror to work.  Apparently the "Enhanced
1761 Tracking Protection" in Firefox cause the problem.  I ended up
1762 upgrading to the Bookworm edition of Zoneminder in the process to try
1763 to fix the issue, and believe the problem might be solved now.</p>
1764
1765 <p>In the process I came across the nice Linux GUI tool
1766 <a href="https://gitlab.com/caspermeijn/onvifviewer/">ONVIF Viewer</a>
1767 allowing me to preview the camera output and validate the login
1768 passwords required.  Sadly its author has grown tired of maintaining
1769 the software, so it might not see any future updates.  Which is sad,
1770 as the viewer is sightly unstable and the picture tend to lock up.
1771 Note, this lockup might be due to limitations in the cameras and not
1772 the viewer implementation.  I suspect the camera is only able to
1773 provide pictures to one client at the time, and the Zoneminder feed
1774 might interfere with the GUI viewer.  I have
1775 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1000820">asked for the tool to be
1776 included in Debian</a>.</p>
1777
1778 <p>Finally, I found what appear to be very nice Linux free software
1779 replacement for the Windows tool, named
1780 <a href="https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/">libonvif</a>.  It
1781 provide a C library to talk to ONVIF devices as well as a command line
1782 and GUI tool using the library.  Using the GUI tool I was able to change
1783 the admin passwords and update other settings of the cameras.  I have
1784 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1021980">asked for the package to be
1785 included in Debian</a>.</p>
1786
1787 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1788 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1789 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1790
1791 <p><strong>Update 2022-10-20</strong>: Since my initial publication of
1792 this text, I got several suggestions for more free software Linux
1793 tools.  There is <a href="https://github.com/quatanium/python-onvif">a
1794 ONVIF python library</a> (already
1795 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/824240">requested into Debian</a>) and
1796 <a href="https://github.com/FalkTannhaeuser/python-onvif-zeep">a python 3
1797 fork</a> using a different SOAP dependency.  There is also
1798 <a href="https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/onvif/">support for
1799 ONVIF in Home Assistant</a>, and there is an alternative to Zoneminder
1800 called <a href="https://www.shinobi.video/">Shinobi</a>.  The latter
1801 two are not included in Debian either.  I have not tested any of these
1802 so far.</p>
1803
1804       </div>
1805       <div class="tags">
1806
1807
1808         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1809
1810
1811       </div>
1812     </div>
1813     <div class="padding"></div>
1814
1815     <div class="entry">
1816       <div class="title">
1817         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_translate_the_Bullseye_edition_of_the_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Time to translate the Bullseye edition of the Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
1818       </div>
1819       <div class="date">
1820         12th September 2022
1821       </div>
1822       <div class="body">
1823         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width="60%"/></p>
1824
1825 <p>(The picture is of the previous edition.)</p>
1826
1827 <p>Almost two years after the previous Norwegian Bokmål translation of
1828 the "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
1829 Handbook</a>" was published, a new edition is finally being prepared.  The
1830 english text is updated, and it is time to start working on the
1831 translations.  Around 37 percent of the strings have been updated, one
1832 way or another, and the translations starting from a complete Debian Buster
1833 edition now need to bring their translation up from 63% to 100%.  The
1834 complete book is licensed using a Creative Commons license, and has
1835 been published in several languages over the years.  The translations
1836 are done by volunteers to bring Linux in their native tongue.  The
1837 last time I checked, it complete text was available in English,
1838 Norwegian Bokmål, German, Indonesian, Brazil Portuguese and Spanish.
1839 In addition, work has been started for Arabic (Morocco), Catalan,
1840 Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish,
1841 Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish,
1842 Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese.</p>
1843
1844 <p>The translation is conducted on
1845 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
1846 hosted weblate project page</a>.  Prospective translators are
1847 recommeded to subscribe to
1848 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
1849 translators mailing list</a> and should also check out
1850 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
1851 contributors</a>.</p>
1852
1853 <p>I am one of the Norwegian Bokmål translators of this book, and we
1854 have just started.  Your contribution is most welcome.</p>
1855
1856 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1857 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1858 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1859
1860       </div>
1861       <div class="tags">
1862
1863
1864         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1865
1866
1867       </div>
1868     </div>
1869     <div class="padding"></div>
1870
1871     <div class="entry">
1872       <div class="title">
1873         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_LinuxCNC_servo_PID_tuning_.html">Automatic LinuxCNC servo PID tuning?</a>
1874       </div>
1875       <div class="date">
1876         16th July 2022
1877       </div>
1878       <div class="body">
1879         <p>While working on a CNC with servo motors controlled by the
1880 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC</a>
1881 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller">PID
1882 controller</a>, I recently had to learn how to tune the collection of values
1883 that control such mathematical machinery that a PID controller is.  It
1884 proved to be a lot harder than I hoped, and I still have not succeeded
1885 in getting the Z PID controller to successfully defy gravity, nor X
1886 and Y to move accurately and reliably.  But while climbing up this
1887 rather steep learning curve, I discovered that some motor control
1888 systems are able to tune their PID controllers.  I got the impression
1889 from the documentation that LinuxCNC were not.  This proved to be not
1890 true.</p>
1891
1892 <p>The LinuxCNC
1893 <a href="http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man9/pid.9.html">pid
1894 component</a> is the recommended PID controller to use.  It uses eight
1895 constants <tt>Pgain</tt>, <tt>Igain</tt>, <tt>Dgain</tt>,
1896 <tt>bias</tt>, <tt>FF0</tt>, <tt>FF1</tt>, <tt>FF2</tt> and
1897 <tt>FF3</tt> to calculate the output value based on current and wanted
1898 state, and all of these need to have a sensible value for the
1899 controller to behave properly.  Note, there are even more values
1900 involved, theser are just the most important ones.  In my case I need
1901 the X, Y and Z axes to follow the requested path with little error.
1902 This has proved quite a challenge for someone who have never tuned a
1903 PID controller before, but there is at least some help to be found.
1904
1905 <p>I discovered that included in LinuxCNC was this old PID component
1906 at_pid claiming to have auto tuning capabilities.  Sadly it had been
1907 neglected since 2011, and could not be used as a plug in replacement
1908 for the default pid component.  One would have to rewriting the
1909 LinuxCNC HAL setup to test at_pid.  This was rather sad, when I wanted
1910 to quickly test auto tuning to see if it did a better job than me at
1911 figuring out good P, I and D values to use.</p>
1912
1913 <p>I decided to have a look if the situation could be improved.  This
1914 involved trying to understand the code and history of the pid and
1915 at_pid components.  Apparently they had a common ancestor, as code
1916 structure, comments and variable names were quite close to each other.
1917 Sadly this was not reflected in the git history, making it hard to
1918 figure out what really happened.  My guess is that the author of
1919 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/at_pid.c">at_pid.c</a>
1920 took a version of
1921 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/pid.c">pid.c</a>,
1922 rewrote it to follow the structure he wished pid.c to have, then added
1923 support for auto tuning and finally got it included into the LinuxCNC
1924 repository.  The restructuring and lack of early history made it
1925 harder to figure out which part of the code were relevant to the auto
1926 tuning, and which part of the code needed to be updated to work the
1927 same way as the current pid.c implementation.  I started by trying to
1928 isolate relevant changes in pid.c, and applying them to at_pid.c.  My
1929 aim was to make sure the at_pid component could replace the pid
1930 component with a simple change in the HAL setup loadrt line, without
1931 having to "rewire" the rest of the HAL configuration.  After a few
1932 hours following this approach, I had learned quite a lot about the
1933 code structure of both components, while concluding I was heading down
1934 the wrong rabbit hole, and should get back to the surface and find a
1935 different path.</p>
1936
1937 <p>For the second attempt, I decided to throw away all the PID control
1938 related part of the original at_pid.c, and instead isolate and lift
1939 the auto tuning part of the code and inject it into a copy of pid.c.
1940 This ensured compatibility with the current pid component, while
1941 adding auto tuning as a run time option.  To make it easier to identify
1942 the relevant parts in the future, I wrapped all the auto tuning code
1943 with '#ifdef AUTO_TUNER'.  The end result behave just like the current
1944 pid component by default, as that part of the code is identical.  The
1945 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/1820">end result
1946 entered the LinuxCNC master branch</a> a few days ago.</p>
1947
1948 <p>To enable auto tuning, one need to set a few HAL pins in the PID
1949 component.  The most important ones are <tt>tune-effort</tt>,
1950 <tt>tune-mode</tt> and <tt>tune-start</tt>.  But lets take a step
1951 back, and see what the auto tuning code will do.  I do not know the
1952 mathematical foundation of the at_pid algorithm, but from observation
1953 I can tell that the algorithm will, when enabled, produce a square
1954 wave pattern centered around the <tt>bias</tt> value on the output pin
1955 of the PID controller.  This can be seen using the HAL Scope provided
1956 by LinuxCNC.  In my case, this is translated into voltage (+-10V) sent
1957 to the motor controller, which in turn is translated into motor speed.
1958 So at_pid will ask the motor to move the axis back and forth.  The
1959 number of cycles in the pattern is controlled by the
1960 <tt>tune-cycles</tt> pin, and the extremes of the wave pattern is
1961 controlled by the <tt>tune-effort</tt> pin.  Of course, trying to
1962 change the direction of a physical object instantly (as in going
1963 directly from a positive voltage to the equivalent negative voltage)
1964 do not change velocity instantly, and it take some time for the object
1965 to slow down and move in the opposite direction.  This result in a
1966 more smooth movement wave form, as the axis in question were vibrating
1967 back and forth.  When the axis reached the target speed in the
1968 opposing direction, the auto tuner change direction again.  After
1969 several of these changes, the average time delay between the 'peaks'
1970 and 'valleys' of this movement graph is then used to calculate
1971 proposed values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain, and insert them into the
1972 HAL model to use by the pid controller.  The auto tuned settings are
1973 not great, but htye work a lot better than the values I had been able
1974 to cook up on my own, at least for the horizontal X and Y axis.  But I
1975 had to use very small <tt>tune-effort<tt> values, as my motor
1976 controllers error out if the voltage change too quickly.  I've been
1977 less lucky with the Z axis, which is moving a heavy object up and
1978 down, and seem to confuse the algorithm.  The Z axis movement became a
1979 lot better when I introduced a <tt>bias</tt> value to counter the
1980 gravitational drag, but I will have to work a lot more on the Z axis
1981 PID values.</p>
1982
1983 <p>Armed with this knowledge, it is time to look at how to do the
1984 tuning.  Lets say the HAL configuration in question load the PID
1985 component for X, Y and Z like this:</p>
1986
1987 <blockquote><pre>
1988 loadrt pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
1989 </pre></blockquote>
1990
1991 <p>Armed with the new and improved at_pid component, the new line will
1992 look like this:</p>
1993
1994 <blockquote><pre>
1995 loadrt at_pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
1996 </pre></blockquote>
1997
1998 <p>The rest of the HAL setup can stay the same.  This work because the
1999 components are referenced by name.  If the component had used count=3
2000 instead, all use of pid.# had to be changed to at_pid.#.</p>
2001
2002 <p>To start tuning the X axis, move the axis to the middle of its
2003 range, to make sure it do not hit anything when it start moving back
2004 and forth.  Next, set the <tt>tune-effort</tt> to a low number in the
2005 output range.  I used 0.1 as my initial value.  Next, assign 1 to the
2006 <tt>tune-mode</tt> value. Note, this will disable the pid controlling
2007 part and feed 0 to the output pin, which in my case initially caused a
2008 lot of drift.  In my case it proved to be a good idea with X and Y to
2009 tune the motor driver to make sure 0 voltage stopped the motor
2010 rotation.  On the other hand, for the Z axis this proved to be a bad
2011 idea, so it will depend on your setup.  It might help to set the
2012 <tt>bias</tt> value to a output value that reduce or eliminate the
2013 axis drift.  Finally, after setting <tt>tune-mode</tt>, set
2014 <tt>tune-start</tt> to 1 to activate the auto tuning.  If all go well,
2015 your axis will vibrate for a few seconds and when it is done, new
2016 values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain will be active.  To test them,
2017 change <tt>tune-mode</tt> back to 0.  Note that this might cause the
2018 machine to suddenly jerk as it bring the axis back to its commanded
2019 position, which it might have drifted away from during tuning.  To
2020 summarize with some halcmd lines:</p>
2021
2022 <blockquote><pre>
2023 setp pid.x.tune-effort 0.1
2024 setp pid.x.tune-mode 1
2025 setp pid.x.tune-start 1
2026 # wait for the tuning to complete
2027 setp pid.x.tune-mode 0
2028 </pre></blockquote>
2029
2030 <p>After doing this task quite a few times while trying to figure out
2031 how to properly tune the PID controllers on the machine in, I decided
2032 to figure out if this process could be automated, and wrote a script
2033 to do the entire tuning process from power on.  The end result will
2034 ensure the machine is powered on and ready to run, home all axis if it
2035 is not already done, check that the extra tuning pins are available,
2036 move the axis to its mid point, run the auto tuning and re-enable the
2037 pid controller when it is done.  It can be run several times.  Check
2038 out the
2039 <a href="https://github.com/SebKuzminsky/MazakVQC1540/blob/bon-dev/scripts/run-auto-pid-tuner">run-auto-pid-tuner</a>
2040 script on github if you want to learn how it is done.</p>
2041
2042 <p>My hope is that this little adventure can inspire someone who know
2043 more about motor PID controller tuning can implement even better
2044 algorithms for automatic PID tuning in LinuxCNC, making life easier
2045 for both me and all the others that want to use LinuxCNC but lack the
2046 in depth knowledge needed to tune PID controllers well.</p>
2047
2048 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2049 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2050 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2051
2052       </div>
2053       <div class="tags">
2054
2055
2056         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2057
2058
2059       </div>
2060     </div>
2061     <div class="padding"></div>
2062
2063     <div class="entry">
2064       <div class="title">
2065         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LinuxCNC_translators_life_just_got_a_bit_easier.html">LinuxCNC translators life just got a bit easier</a>
2066       </div>
2067       <div class="date">
2068          3rd June 2022
2069       </div>
2070       <div class="body">
2071         <p>Back in oktober last year, when I started looking at the
2072 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC</a> system, I
2073 proposed to change the documentation build system make life easier for
2074 translators.  The original system consisted of independently written
2075 documentation files for each language, with no automated way to track
2076 changes done in other translations and no help for the translators to
2077 know how much was left to translated.  By using
2078 <a href="https://po4a.org/">the po4a system</a> to generate POT and PO
2079 files from the English documentation, this can be improved.  A small
2080 team of LinuxCNC contributors got together and today our labour
2081 finally payed off.  Since a few hours ago, it is now possible to
2082 translate <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/linuxcnc/">the
2083 LinuxCNC documentation on Weblate</a>, alongside the program itself.</p>
2084
2085 <p>The effort to migrate the documentation to use po4a has been both
2086 slow and frustrating.  I am very happy we finally made it.</p>
2087
2088 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2089 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2090 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2091
2092       </div>
2093       <div class="tags">
2094
2095
2096         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2097
2098
2099       </div>
2100     </div>
2101     <div class="padding"></div>
2102
2103     <div class="entry">
2104       <div class="title">
2105         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/geteltorito_make_CD_firmware_upgrades_a_breeze.html">geteltorito make CD firmware upgrades a breeze</a>
2106       </div>
2107       <div class="date">
2108         20th April 2022
2109       </div>
2110       <div class="body">
2111         <p>Recently I wanted to upgrade the firmware of my thinkpad, and
2112 located the firmware download page from Lenovo (which annoyingly do
2113 not allow access via Tor, forcing me to hand them more personal
2114 information that I would like).  The
2115 <a href="https://support.lenovo.com/no/en/search?query=thinkpad firmware bios upgrade iso&SearchType=Customer search&searchLocation=Masthead">download
2116 from Lenovo</a> is a bootable ISO image, which is a bit of a problem
2117 when all I got available is a USB memory stick.  I tried booting the
2118 ISO as a USB stick, but this did not work.  But genisoimage came to
2119 the rescue.</p>
2120
2121 <P>The geteltorito program in
2122 <a href="http://tracker.debian.org/cdrkit">the genisoimage binary
2123 package</a> is able to convert the bootable ISO image to a bootable
2124 USB stick using a simple command line recipe, which I then can write
2125 to the most recently inserted USB stick:</p>
2126
2127 <blockquote><pre>
2128 geteltorito -o usbstick.img lenovo-firmware.iso
2129 sudo dd bs=10M if=usbstick.img of=$(ls -tr /dev/sd?|tail -1)
2130 </pre></blockquote>
2131
2132 <p>This USB stick booted the firmware upgrader just fine, and in a few
2133 minutes my machine had the latest and greatest BIOS firmware in place.</p>
2134
2135       </div>
2136       <div class="tags">
2137
2138
2139         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2140
2141
2142       </div>
2143     </div>
2144     <div class="padding"></div>
2145
2146     <div class="entry">
2147       <div class="title">
2148         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Run_your_industrial_metal_working_machine_using_Debian_.html">Run your industrial metal working machine using Debian?</a>
2149       </div>
2150       <div class="date">
2151          2nd March 2022
2152       </div>
2153       <div class="body">
2154         <p>After many months of hard work by the good people involved in
2155 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC</a>, the
2156 system was accepted Sunday
2157 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/linuxcnc">into Debian</a>.
2158 Once it was available from Debian, I was surprised to discover from
2159 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=linuxcnc">its
2160 popularity-contest numbers</a> that people have been reporting its use
2161 since 2012.  <a href="http://linuxcnc.org/">Its project site</a> might
2162 be a good place to check out, but sadly is not working when visiting
2163 via Tor.</p>
2164
2165 <p>But what is LinuxCNC, you are probably wondering?  Perhaps a
2166 Wikipedia quote is in place?</p>
2167
2168 <blockquote>
2169 "LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
2170 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
2171 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
2172 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
2173 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
2174 interactive development)."
2175 </blockquote>
2176
2177 <p>It can even control 3D printers.  And even though the Wikipedia
2178 page indicate that it can only work with hard real time kernel
2179 features, it can also work with the user space soft real time features
2180 provided by the Debian kernel.
2181 <a href="https://github.com/linuxcnc/linuxcnc">The source code</a> is
2182 available from Github.  The last few months I've been involved in the
2183 translation setup for the program and documentation.  Translators are
2184 most welcome to
2185 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/engage/linuxcnc/">join the
2186 effort</a> using Weblate.</p>
2187
2188 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2189 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2190 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2191
2192       </div>
2193       <div class="tags">
2194
2195
2196         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2197
2198
2199       </div>
2200     </div>
2201     <div class="padding"></div>
2202
2203     <div class="entry">
2204       <div class="title">
2205         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_still_an_excellent_choice_for_Lego_builders.html">Debian still an excellent choice for Lego builders</a>
2206       </div>
2207       <div class="date">
2208         24th October 2021
2209       </div>
2210       <div class="body">
2211         <p>The Debian Lego team saw a lot of activity the last few weeks.  All
2212 the packages under the team umbrella has been updated to fix
2213 packaging, lintian issues and BTS reports.  In addition, a new and
2214 inspiring team member appeared on both the
2215 <a href="https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-lego-team">debian-lego-team
2216 Team mailing list</a> and
2217 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC channel
2218 #debian-lego</a>.  If you are interested in Lego CAD design and LEGO
2219 Mindstorms programming, check out the
2220 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">team wiki page</a> to
2221 see what Debian can offer the Lego enthusiast.</p>
2222
2223 <p>Patches has been sent upstream, causing new upstream releases, one
2224 even the first one in more than ten years, and old upstreams was
2225 released with new ones.  There are still a lot of work left, and the
2226 team welcome more members to help us make sure Debian is the Linux
2227 distribution of choice for Lego builders.  If you want to contribute,
2228 join us in the IRC channel and become part of
2229 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/debian-lego-team/">the team on
2230 Salsa</a>.</p>
2231
2232 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2233 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2234 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2235
2236       </div>
2237       <div class="tags">
2238
2239
2240         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2241
2242
2243       </div>
2244     </div>
2245     <div class="padding"></div>
2246
2247     <div class="entry">
2248       <div class="title">
2249         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Six_complete_translations_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_for_Buster.html">Six complete translations of The Debian Administrator's Handbook for Buster</a>
2250       </div>
2251       <div class="date">
2252          5th July 2021
2253       </div>
2254       <div class="body">
2255         <p>I am happy observe that the <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The
2256 Debian Administrator's Handbook</a> is available in six languages now.
2257 I am not sure which one of these are completely proof read, but the
2258 complete book is available in these languages:
2259
2260 <ul>
2261
2262 <li>English</li>
2263 <li>Norwegian Bokmål</li>
2264 <li>German</li>
2265 <li>Indonesian</li>
2266 <li>Brazil Portuguese</li>
2267 <li>Spanish</li>
2268
2269 </ul>
2270
2271 <p>This is the list of languages more than 70% complete, in other
2272 words with not too much left to do:</p>
2273
2274 <ul>
2275
2276 <li>Chinese (Simplified) - 90%</li>
2277 <li>French - 79%</li>
2278 <li>Italian - 79%</li>
2279 <li>Japanese - 77%</li>
2280 <li>Arabic (Morocco) - 75%</li>
2281 <li>Persian - 71%</li>
2282
2283 </ul>
2284
2285 <p>I wonder how long it will take to bring these to 100%.</p>
2286
2287 <p>Then there is the list of languages about halfway done:</p>
2288
2289 <ul>
2290
2291 <li>Russian - 63%</li>
2292 <li>Swedish - 53%</li>
2293 <li>Chinese (Traditional) - 46%</li>
2294 <li>Catalan - 45%</li>
2295
2296 </ul>
2297
2298 <p>Several are on to a good start:</p>
2299
2300 <ul>
2301
2302 <li>Dutch - 26%</li>
2303 <li>Vietnamese - 25%</li>
2304 <li>Polish - 23%</li>
2305 <li>Czech - 22%</li>
2306 <li>Turkish - 18%</li>
2307
2308 </ul>
2309
2310 <p>Finally, there are the ones just getting started:</p>
2311
2312 <ul>
2313
2314 <li>Korean - 4%</li>
2315 <li>Croatian - 2%</li>
2316 <li>Greek - 2%</li>
2317 <li>Danish - 1%</li>
2318 <li>Romanian - 1%</li>
2319
2320 </ul>
2321
2322 <p>If you want to help provide a Debian instruction book in your own
2323 language, visit
2324 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/#languages">Weblate</a>
2325 to contribute to the translations.</p>
2326
2327 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2328 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2329 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2330
2331       </div>
2332       <div class="tags">
2333
2334
2335         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2336
2337
2338       </div>
2339     </div>
2340     <div class="padding"></div>
2341
2342     <div class="entry">
2343       <div class="title">
2344         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Latest_Jami_back_in_Debian_Testing__and_scriptable_using_dbus.html">Latest Jami back in Debian Testing, and scriptable using dbus</a>
2345       </div>
2346       <div class="date">
2347         12th January 2021
2348       </div>
2349       <div class="body">
2350         <p>After a lot of hard work by its maintainer Alexandre Viau and
2351 others, the decentralized communication platform
2352 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami</a>
2353 (earlier known as Ring), managed to get
2354 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">its latest version</a>
2355 into Debian Testing.  Several of its dependencies has caused build and
2356 propagation problems, which all seem to be solved now.</p>
2357
2358 <p>In addition to the fact that Jami is decentralized, similar to how
2359 bittorrent is decentralized, I first of all like how it is not
2360 connected to external IDs like phone numbers.  This allow me to set up
2361 computers to send me notifications using Jami without having to find
2362 get a phone number for each computer.  Automatic notification via Jami
2363 is also made trivial thanks to the provided client side API (as a DBus
2364 service).  Here is my bourne shell script demonstrating how to let any
2365 system send a message to any Jami address.  It will create a new
2366 identity before sending the message, if no Jami identity exist
2367 already:</p>
2368
2369 <p><pre>
2370 #!/bin/sh
2371 #
2372 # Usage: $0 <jami-address> <message>
2373 #
2374 # Send <message> to <jami-address>, create local jami account if
2375 # missing.
2376 #
2377 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice
2378 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
2379
2380
2381 if [ -z "$HOME" ] ; then
2382     echo "error: missing \$HOME, required for dbus to work"
2383     exit 1
2384 fi
2385
2386 # First, get dbus running if not already running
2387 DBUSLAUNCH=/usr/bin/dbus-launch
2388 PIDFILE=/run/asterisk/dbus-session.pid
2389 if [ -e $PIDFILE ] ; then
2390     . $PIDFILE
2391     if ! kill -0 $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID 2>/dev/null ; then
2392         unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
2393     fi
2394 fi
2395 if [ -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ] && [ -x "$DBUSLAUNCH" ]; then
2396     DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=$HOME/.dbus"
2397     dbus-daemon --session --address="$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" --nofork --nopidfile --syslog-only < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 3>&1 &
2398     DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$!
2399     (
2400         echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID
2401         echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=\""$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"\"
2402         echo export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
2403     ) > $PIDFILE
2404     . $PIDFILE
2405 fi &
2406
2407 dringop() {
2408     part="$1"; shift
2409     op="$1"; shift
2410     dbus-send --session \
2411         --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
2412 }
2413
2414 dringopreply() {
2415     part="$1"; shift
2416     op="$1"; shift
2417     dbus-send --session --print-reply \
2418         --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
2419 }
2420
2421 firstaccount() {
2422     dringopreply ConfigurationManager getAccountList | \
2423       grep string | awk -F'"' '{print $2}' | head -n 1
2424 }
2425
2426 account=$(firstaccount)
2427
2428 if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
2429     echo "Missing local account, trying to create it"
2430     dringop ConfigurationManager addAccount \
2431       dict:string:string:"Account.type","RING","Account.videoEnabled","false"
2432     account=$(firstaccount)
2433     if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
2434         echo "unable to create local account"
2435         exit 1
2436     fi
2437 fi
2438
2439 # Not using dringopreply to ensure $2 can contain spaces
2440 dbus-send --print-reply --session \
2441   --dest=cx.ring.Ring \
2442   /cx/ring/Ring/ConfigurationManager \
2443   cx.ring.Ring.ConfigurationManager.sendTextMessage \
2444   string:"$account" string:"$1" \
2445   dict:string:string:"text/plain","$2"
2446 </pre></p>
2447
2448 <p>If you want to check it out yourself, visit the
2449 <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami system project page</a> to learn
2450 more, and install the latest Jami client from Debian Unstable or
2451 Testing.</p>
2452
2453 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2454 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2455 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2456
2457       </div>
2458       <div class="tags">
2459
2460
2461         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2462
2463
2464       </div>
2465     </div>
2466     <div class="padding"></div>
2467
2468     <div class="entry">
2469       <div class="title">
2470         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Buster_based_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Buster based Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
2471       </div>
2472       <div class="date">
2473         20th October 2020
2474       </div>
2475       <div class="body">
2476         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width="60%"/></p>
2477
2478 <p>I am happy to report that we finally made it!  Norwegian Bokmål
2479 became the first translation published on paper of the new Buster
2480 based edition of "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
2481 Administrator's Handbook</a>".  The print proof reading copy arrived
2482 some days ago, and it looked good, so now the book is approved for
2483 general distribution.  This updated paperback edition <a
2484 href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available from
2485 lulu.com</a>.  The book is also available for download in electronic
2486 form as PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, and can also be
2487 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online</a>.</p>
2488
2489 <p>I am very happy to wrap up this Creative Common licensed project,
2490 which concludes several months of work by several volunteers. The
2491 number of Linux related books published in Norwegian are few, and I
2492 really hope this one will gain many readers, as it is packed with deep
2493 knowledge on Linux and the Debian ecosystem.  The book will be
2494 available for various Internet book stores like Amazon and Barnes &
2495 Noble soon, but I recommend buying
2496 "<a href="https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/roland-mas-and-rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-9j7qwq.html">Håndbok
2497 for Debian-administratoren</a>" directly from the source at Lulu.
2498
2499 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2500 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2501 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2502
2503       </div>
2504       <div class="tags">
2505
2506
2507         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2508
2509
2510       </div>
2511     </div>
2512     <div class="padding"></div>
2513
2514     <div class="entry">
2515       <div class="title">
2516         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Buster_update_of_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_almost_done.html">Buster update of Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook almost done</a>
2517       </div>
2518       <div class="date">
2519         11th September 2020
2520       </div>
2521       <div class="body">
2522         <p>Thanks to the good work of several volunteers, the updated edition
2523 of the Norwegian translation for
2524 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
2525 Handbook</a>" is now almost completed.  After many months of proof
2526 reading, I consider the proof reading complete enough for us to move
2527 to the next step, and have asked for the print version to be prepared
2528 and sent of to the print on demand service lulu.com.  While it is
2529 still not to late if you find any incorrect translations on
2530 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
2531 hosted Weblate service</a>, but it will be soon. :) You can check out
2532 <a href=" https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">the Buster
2533 edition on the web</a> until the print edition is ready.</p>
2534
2535 <p>The book will be for sale on lulu.com and various web book stores,
2536 with links available from the web site for the book linked to above.
2537 I hope a lot of readers find it useful.</p>
2538
2539 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2540 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2541 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2542
2543       </div>
2544       <div class="tags">
2545
2546
2547         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2548
2549
2550       </div>
2551     </div>
2552     <div class="padding"></div>
2553
2554     <div class="entry">
2555       <div class="title">
2556         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Working on updated Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
2557       </div>
2558       <div class="date">
2559          4th July 2020
2560       </div>
2561       <div class="body">
2562         <p>Three years ago, the first Norwegian Bokmål edition of
2563 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
2564 Handbook</a>" was published.  This was based on Debian Jessie.  Now a
2565 new and updated version based on Buster is getting ready.  Work on the
2566 updated Norwegian Bokmål edition has been going on for a few months
2567 now, and yesterday, we reached the first mile stone, with 100% of the
2568 texts being translated.  A lot of proof reading remains, of course,
2569 but a major step towards a new edition has been taken.</p>
2570
2571 <p>The book is translated by volunteers, and we would love to get some
2572 help with the proof reading.  The translation uses
2573 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
2574 hosted Weblate service</a>, and we welcome everyone to have a look and
2575 submit improvements and suggestions.  There is also a proof readers
2576 PDF available on request, get in touch if you want to help out that
2577 way.</p>
2578
2579 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2580 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2581 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2582
2583       </div>
2584       <div class="tags">
2585
2586
2587         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2588
2589
2590       </div>
2591     </div>
2592     <div class="padding"></div>
2593
2594     <div class="entry">
2595       <div class="title">
2596         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html">Secure Socket API - a simple and powerful approach for TLS support in software</a>
2597       </div>
2598       <div class="date">
2599          6th June 2020
2600       </div>
2601       <div class="body">
2602         <p>As a member of the <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix
2603 User Group</a>, I have the pleasure of receiving the
2604 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a> magazine
2605 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/">;login:</a>
2606 several times a year.  I rarely have time to read all the articles,
2607 but try to at least skim through them all as there is a lot of nice
2608 knowledge passed on there.  I even carry the latest issue with me most
2609 of the time to try to get through all the articles when I have a few
2610 spare minutes.</p>
2611
2612 <p>The other day I came across a nice article titled
2613 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/winter2018/oneill">The
2614 Secure Socket API: TLS as an Operating System Service</a>" with a
2615 marvellous idea I hope can make it all the way into the POSIX standard.
2616 The idea is as simple as it is powerful.  By introducing a new
2617 socket() option IPPROTO_TLS to use TLS, and a system wide service to
2618 handle setting up TLS connections, one both make it trivial to add TLS
2619 support to any program currently using the POSIX socket API, and gain
2620 system wide control over certificates, TLS versions and encryption
2621 systems used.  Instead of doing this:</p>
2622
2623 <p><blockquote><pre>
2624 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
2625 </pre></blockquote></p>
2626
2627 <p>the program code would be doing this:<p>
2628
2629 <p><blockquote><pre>
2630 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TLS);
2631 </pre></blockquote></p>
2632
2633 <p>According to the ;login: article, converting a C program to use TLS
2634 would normally modify only 5-10 lines in the code, which is amazing
2635 when compared to using for example the OpenSSL API.</p>
2636
2637 <p>The project has set up the
2638 <a href="https://securesocketapi.org/">https://securesocketapi.org/</a>
2639 web site to spread the idea, and the code for a kernel module and the
2640 associated system daemon is available from two github repositories:
2641 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa">ssa</a> and
2642 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa-daemon">ssa-daemon</a>.
2643 Unfortunately there is no explicit license information with the code,
2644 so its copyright status is unclear.  A
2645 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa/issues/2">request to solve
2646 this</a> about it has been unsolved since 2018-08-17.</p>
2647
2648 <p>I love the idea of extending socket() to gain TLS support, and
2649 understand why it is an advantage to implement this as a kernel module
2650 and system wide service daemon, but can not help to think that it
2651 would be a lot easier to get projects to move to this way of setting
2652 up TLS if it was done with a user space approach where programs
2653 wanting to use this API approach could just link with a wrapper
2654 library.</p>
2655
2656 <p>I recommend you check out this simple and powerful approach to more
2657 secure network connections. :)</p>
2658
2659 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2660 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2661 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2662
2663       </div>
2664       <div class="tags">
2665
2666
2667         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2668
2669
2670       </div>
2671     </div>
2672     <div class="padding"></div>
2673
2674     <div class="entry">
2675       <div class="title">
2676         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html">Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</a>
2677       </div>
2678       <div class="date">
2679          8th May 2020
2680       </div>
2681       <div class="body">
2682         <p>Half a year ago,
2683 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">I
2684 wrote</a> about <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami communication
2685 client</a>, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication.  It
2686 handle both messages, audio and video.  It uses distributed hash
2687 tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
2688 other, which in my book is a plus.  I mentioned briefly that it could
2689 also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
2690 educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
2691 conferencing solution.  I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
2692 software, due to their <a href="https://zoom.us/terms">copyright
2693 license clauses</a> prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
2694 to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
2695 Zoom meetings with free software clients.</p>
2696
2697 <p>Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
2698 password set on the room.  The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
2699 (approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
2700 conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
2701 is not great.  I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
2702 without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
2703 until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base.  But
2704 another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected.  I
2705 could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
2706 dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
2707 Zoom.  I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
2708 Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
2709 through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
2710 be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
2711 connecting via SIP.  There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
2712 Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end.  I got help from a
2713 very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part.  And being a
2714 very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
2715 Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
2716 connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.</p>
2717
2718 <p>So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now.  The
2719 trick is already
2720 <a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip">documented
2721 from Zoom</a>, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
2722 password.  What is most surprising about this is that the
2723 automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
2724 connect via SIP do not mention this.  The SIP address to use normally
2725 consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
2726 of the Zoom SIP gateway.  But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
2727 room ID in front of the at sign.  The format is "<tt>[Meeting
2728 ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]</tt>", and you can here see how you
2729 can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
2730 presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
2731 The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
2732 then look like this (all using made up numbers):</p>
2733
2734 <p><blockquote>
2735 <tt>sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170</tt>
2736 </blockquote></p>
2737
2738 <p>Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
2739 recommend this setup to others. :)</p>
2740
2741 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2742 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2743 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2744
2745       </div>
2746       <div class="tags">
2747
2748
2749         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2750
2751
2752       </div>
2753     </div>
2754     <div class="padding"></div>
2755
2756     <div class="entry">
2757       <div class="title">
2758         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html">GnuCOBOL, a free platform to learn and use COBOL - nice free software</a>
2759       </div>
2760       <div class="date">
2761         29th April 2020
2762       </div>
2763       <div class="body">
2764         <p>The curiosity got the better of me when
2765 <a href="https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/04/06/1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers">Slashdot
2766 reported</a> that New Jersey was desperately looking for
2767 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL">COBOL</a> programmers,
2768 and a few days later it was reported that
2769 <a href="https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce">IBM
2770 tried to locate COBOL programmers</a>.</p>
2771
2772 <p>I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
2773 learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
2774 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/">GnuCOBOL</a> was
2775 already <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol">in
2776 Debian</a>.  It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a "compiler"
2777 transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
2778 Studio to build binaries.</p>
2779
2780 <p>I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
2781 quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
2782 taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced.  A
2783 new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.</p>
2784
2785 <p>Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
2786 introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs.  It was fun to
2787 learn a new programming language.  If you want to test for yourself,
2788 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL">the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
2789 page</a> have a few simple examples to get you startet.</p>
2790
2791 <p>As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
2792 standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
2793 test suite, which sound good to me.  It is nice to know it is possible
2794 to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
2795 very happy such nice free software project as this is available.  If
2796 you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.</p>
2797
2798 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2799 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2800 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2801
2802       </div>
2803       <div class="tags">
2804
2805
2806         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2807
2808
2809       </div>
2810     </div>
2811     <div class="padding"></div>
2812
2813     <div class="entry">
2814       <div class="title">
2815         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">Jami/Ring, finally functioning peer to peer communication client</a>
2816       </div>
2817       <div class="date">
2818         19th June 2019
2819       </div>
2820       <div class="body">
2821         <p>Some years ago, in 2016, I
2822 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">wrote
2823 for the first time about</a> the Ring peer to peer messaging system.
2824 It would provide messaging without any central server coordinating the
2825 system and without requiring all users to register a phone number or
2826 own a mobile phone.  Back then, I could not get it to work, and put it
2827 aside until it had seen more development.  A few days ago I decided to
2828 give it another try, and am happy to report that this time I am able
2829 to not only send and receive messages, but also place audio and video
2830 calls.  But only if UDP is not blocked into your network.</p>
2831
2832 <p>The Ring system changed name earlier this year to
2833 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami</a>.  I
2834 tried doing web search for 'ring' when I discovered it for the first
2835 time, and can only applaud this change as it is impossible to find
2836 something called Ring among the noise of other uses of that word.  Now
2837 you can search for 'jami' and this client and
2838 <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami system</a> is the first hit at
2839 least on duckduckgo.</p>
2840
2841 <p>Jami will by default encrypt messages as well as audio and video
2842 calls, and try to send them directly between the communicating parties
2843 if possible.  If this proves impossible (for example if both ends are
2844 behind NAT), it will use a central SIP TURN server maintained by the
2845 Jami project.  Jami can also be a normal SIP client.  If the SIP
2846 server is unencrypted, the audio and video calls will also be
2847 unencrypted.  This is as far as I know the only case where Jami will
2848 do anything without encryption.</p>
2849
2850 <p>Jami is available for several platforms: Linux, Windows, MacOSX,
2851 Android, iOS, and Android TV.  It is included in Debian already.  Jami
2852 also work for those using F-Droid without any Google connections,
2853 while Signal do not.
2854 <a href="https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ring-project/wikis/technical/Protocol">The
2855 protocol</a> is described in the Ring project wiki.  The system uses a
2856 distributed hash table (DHT) system (similar to BitTorrent) running
2857 over UDP.  On one of the networks I use, I discovered Jami failed to
2858 work.  I tracked this down to the fact that incoming UDP packages
2859 going to ports 1-49999 were blocked, and the DHT would pick a random
2860 port and end up in the low range most of the time.  After talking to
2861 the developers, I solved this by enabling the dhtproxy in the
2862 settings, thus using TCP to talk to a central DHT proxy instead of
2863
2864 peering directly with others.  I've been told the developers are
2865 working on allowing DHT to use TCP to avoid this problem.  I also ran
2866 into a problem when trying to talk to the version of Ring included in
2867 Debian Stable (Stretch).  Apparently the protocol changed between
2868 beta2 and the current version, making these clients incompatible.
2869 Hopefully the protocol will not be made incompatible in the
2870 future.</p>
2871
2872 <p>It is worth noting that while looking at Jami and its features, I
2873 came across another communication platform I have not tested yet.  The
2874 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)">Tox protocol</a>
2875 and <a href="https://tox.chat/">family of Tox clients</a>.  It might
2876 become the topic of a future blog post.</p>
2877
2878 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2879 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2880 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2881
2882       </div>
2883       <div class="tags">
2884
2885
2886         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2887
2888
2889       </div>
2890     </div>
2891     <div class="padding"></div>
2892
2893     <div class="entry">
2894       <div class="title">
2895         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Strategispillet_Unknown_Horizons_n__tilgjengelig_p__bokm_l.html">Strategispillet Unknown Horizons nå tilgjengelig på bokmål</a>
2896       </div>
2897       <div class="date">
2898         23rd January 2019
2899       </div>
2900       <div class="body">
2901         <p>I høst ble jeg inspirert til å bidra til oversettelsen av
2902 <a href="http://unknown-horizons.org/">strategispillet Unknown
2903 Horizons</a>, og oversatte de nesten 200 strengene i prosjektet til
2904 bokmål.  Deretter har jeg gått å ventet på at det kom en ny utgave som
2905 inneholdt disse oversettelsene.  Nå er endelig ventetiden over.  Den
2906 nye versjonen kom på nyåret, og ble
2907 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/unknown-horizons">lastet opp i
2908 Debian</a> for noen få dager siden.  I går kveld fikk jeg testet det ut, og
2909 må innrømme at oversettelsene fungerer fint.  Fant noen få tekster som
2910 måtte justeres, men ikke noe alvorlig.  Har oppdatert
2911 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/uh/">oversettelsen på
2912 Weblate</a>, slik at neste utgave vil være enda bedre. :)</p>
2913
2914 <p>Spillet er et ressursstyringsspill ala Civilization, og er morsomt
2915 å spille for oss som liker slikt. :)</p>
2916
2917 <p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
2918 det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
2919 til min adresse
2920 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
2921 Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
2922
2923       </div>
2924       <div class="tags">
2925
2926
2927         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
2928
2929
2930       </div>
2931     </div>
2932     <div class="padding"></div>
2933
2934     <div class="entry">
2935       <div class="title">
2936         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_got_everything_you_need_to_program_Micro_bit.html">Debian now got everything you need to program Micro:bit</a>
2937       </div>
2938       <div class="date">
2939         22nd January 2019
2940       </div>
2941       <div class="body">
2942         <p>I am amazed and very pleased to discover that since a few days ago,
2943 everything you need to program the <a href="https://microbit.org/">BBC
2944 micro:bit</a> is available from the Debian archive.  All this is
2945 thanks to the hard work of Nick Morrott and the Debian python
2946 packaging team.  The micro:bit project recommend the mu-editor to
2947 program the microcomputer, as this editor will take care of all the
2948 machinery required to injekt/flash micropython alongside the program
2949 into the micro:bit, as long as the pieces are available.</p>
2950
2951 <p>There are three main pieces involved.  The first to enter Debian
2952 was
2953 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-uflash">python-uflash</a>,
2954 which was accepted into the archive 2019-01-12.  The next one was
2955 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mu-editor">mu-editor</a>, which
2956 showed up 2019-01-13.  The final and hardest part to to into the
2957 archive was
2958 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firmware-microbit-micropython">firmware-microbit-micropython</a>,
2959 which needed to get its build system and dependencies into Debian
2960 before it was accepted 2019-01-20.  The last one is already in Debian
2961 Unstable and should enter Debian Testing / Buster in three days.  This
2962 all allow any user of the micro:bit to get going by simply running
2963 'apt install mu-editor' when using Testing or Unstable, and once
2964 Buster is released as stable, all the users of Debian stable will be
2965 catered for.</p>
2966
2967 <p>As a minor final touch, I added rules to
2968 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">the isenkram
2969 package</a> for recognizing micro:bit and recommend the mu-editor
2970 package.  This make sure any user of the isenkram desktop daemon will
2971 get a popup suggesting to install mu-editor then the USB cable from
2972 the micro:bit is inserted for the first time.</p>
2973
2974 <p>This should make it easier to have fun.</p>
2975
2976 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2977 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2978 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2979
2980       </div>
2981       <div class="tags">
2982
2983
2984         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2985
2986
2987       </div>
2988     </div>
2989     <div class="padding"></div>
2990
2991     <div class="entry">
2992       <div class="title">
2993         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html">Learn to program with Minetest on Debian</a>
2994       </div>
2995       <div class="date">
2996         15th December 2018
2997       </div>
2998       <div class="body">
2999         <p>A fun way to learn how to program
3000 <a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a> is to follow the
3001 instructions in the book
3002 "<a href="https://nostarch.com/programwithminecraft">Learn to program
3003 with Minecraft</a>", which introduces programming in Python to people
3004 who like to play with Minecraft.  The book uses a Python library to
3005 talk to a TCP/IP socket with an API accepting build instructions and
3006 providing information about the current players in a Minecraft world.
3007 The TCP/IP API was first created for the Minecraft implementation for
3008 Raspberry Pi, and has since been ported to some server versions of
3009 Minecraft.  The book contain recipes for those using Windows, MacOSX
3010 and Raspian.  But a little known fact is that you can follow the same
3011 recipes using the free software construction game
3012 <a href="https://minetest.net/">Minetest</a>.</p>
3013
3014 <p>There is <a href="https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod">a
3015 Minetest module implementing the same API</a>, making it possible to
3016 use the Python programs coded to talk to Minecraft with Minetest too.
3017 I
3018 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/minetest-mod-pycraft_0.20%2Bgit20180331.0376a0a%2Bdfsg-1.html">uploaded
3019 this module</a> to Debian two weeks ago, and as soon as it clears the
3020 FTP masters NEW queue, learning to program Python with Minetest on
3021 Debian will be a simple 'apt install' away.  The Debian package is
3022 maintained as part of the Debian Games team, and
3023 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/unfinished/minetest-mod-pycraft">the
3024 packaging rules</a> are currently located under 'unfinished' on
3025 Salsa.</p>
3026
3027 <p>You will most likely need to install several of the Minetest
3028 modules in Debian for the examples included with the library to work
3029 well, as there are several blocks used by the example scripts that are
3030 provided via modules in Minetest.  Without the required blocks, a
3031 simple stone block is used instead.  My initial testing with a analog
3032 clock did not get gold arms as instructed in the python library, but
3033 instead used stone arms.</p>
3034
3035 <p>I tried to find a way to add the API to the desktop version of
3036 Minecraft, but were unable to find any working recipes.  The
3037 <a href="https://www.epiphanydigest.com/tag/minecraft-python-api/">recipes</a>
3038 I <a href="https://github.com/kbsriram/mcpiapi">found</a> are only
3039 working with a standalone Minecraft server setup.  Are there any
3040 options to use with the normal desktop version?</p>
3041
3042 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3043 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3044 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3045
3046       </div>
3047       <div class="tags">
3048
3049
3050         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3051
3052
3053       </div>
3054     </div>
3055     <div class="padding"></div>
3056
3057     <div class="entry">
3058       <div class="title">
3059         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_an_official_MIME_type_for_patches_.html">Time for an official MIME type for patches?</a>
3060       </div>
3061       <div class="date">
3062          1st November 2018
3063       </div>
3064       <div class="body">
3065         <p>As part of my involvement in
3066 <a href="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">the Nikita
3067 archive API project</a>, I've been importing a fairly large lump of
3068 emails into a test instance of the archive to see how well this would
3069 go.  I picked a subset of <a href="https://notmuchmail.org/">my
3070 notmuch email database</a>, all public emails sent to me via
3071 @lists.debian.org, giving me a set of around 216 000 emails to import.
3072 In the process, I had a look at the various attachments included in
3073 these emails, to figure out what to do with attachments, and noticed
3074 that one of the most common attachment formats do not have
3075 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">an
3076 official MIME type</a> registered with IANA/IETF.  The output from
3077 diff, ie the input for patch, is on the top 10 list of formats
3078 included in these emails.  At the moment people seem to use either
3079 text/x-patch or text/x-diff, but neither is officially registered.  It
3080 would be better if one official MIME type were registered and used
3081 everywhere.</p>
3082
3083 <p>To try to get one official MIME type for these files, I've brought
3084 up the topic on
3085 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/media-types">the
3086 media-types mailing list</a>.  If you are interested in discussion
3087 which MIME type to use as the official for patch files, or involved in
3088 making software using a MIME type for patches, perhaps you would like
3089 to join the discussion?</p>
3090
3091 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3092 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3093 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3094
3095       </div>
3096       <div class="tags">
3097
3098
3099         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
3100
3101
3102       </div>
3103     </div>
3104     <div class="padding"></div>
3105
3106     <div class="entry">
3107       <div class="title">
3108         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Google_Drive_sync_using_grive_in_Debian.html">Automatic Google Drive sync using grive in Debian</a>
3109       </div>
3110       <div class="date">
3111          4th October 2018
3112       </div>
3113       <div class="body">
3114         <p>A few days, I rescued a Windows victim over to Debian.  To try to
3115 rescue the remains, I helped set up automatic sync with Google Drive.
3116 I did not find any sensible Debian package handling this
3117 automatically, so I rebuild the grive2 source from
3118 <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/">the Ubuntu UPD8 PPA</a> to do the
3119 task and added a autostart desktop entry and a small shell script to
3120 run in the background while the user is logged in to do the sync.
3121 Here is a sketch of the setup for future reference.</p>
3122
3123 <p>I first created <tt>~/googledrive</tt>, entered the directory and
3124 ran '<tt>grive -a</tt>' to authenticate the machine/user.  Next, I
3125 created a autostart hook in <tt>~/.config/autostart/grive.desktop</tt>
3126 to start the sync when the user log in:</p>
3127
3128 <p><blockquote><pre>
3129 [Desktop Entry]
3130 Name=Google drive autosync
3131 Type=Application
3132 Exec=/home/user/bin/grive-sync
3133 </pre></blockquote></p>
3134
3135 <p>Finally, I wrote the <tt>~/bin/grive-sync</tt> script to sync
3136 ~/googledrive/ with the files in Google Drive.</p>
3137
3138 <p><blockquote><pre>
3139 #!/bin/sh
3140 set -e
3141 cd ~/
3142 cleanup() {
3143     if [ "$syncpid" ] ; then
3144         kill $syncpid
3145     fi
3146 }
3147 trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT
3148 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh listen googledrive 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%" &
3149 syncpdi=$!
3150 while true; do
3151     if ! xhost >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
3152         echo "no DISPLAY, exiting as the user probably logged out"
3153         exit 1
3154     fi
3155     if [ ! -e /run/user/1000/grive-sync.sh_googledrive ] ; then
3156         /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh sync googledrive
3157     fi
3158     sleep 300
3159 done 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%"
3160 </pre></blockquote></p>
3161
3162 <p>Feel free to use the setup if you want.  It can be assumed to be
3163 GNU GPL v2 licensed (or any later version, at your leisure), but I
3164 doubt this code is possible to claim copyright on.</p>
3165
3166 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3167 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3168 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3169
3170       </div>
3171       <div class="tags">
3172
3173
3174         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3175
3176
3177       </div>
3178     </div>
3179     <div class="padding"></div>
3180
3181     <div class="entry">
3182       <div class="title">
3183         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_the_Kodi_API_to_play_Youtube_videos.html">Using the Kodi API to play Youtube videos</a>
3184       </div>
3185       <div class="date">
3186          2nd September 2018
3187       </div>
3188       <div class="body">
3189         <p>I continue to explore my Kodi installation, and today I wanted to
3190 tell it to play a youtube URL I received in a chat, without having to
3191 insert search terms using the on-screen keyboard.  After searching the
3192 web for API access to the Youtube plugin and testing a bit, I managed
3193 to find a recipe that worked.  If you got a kodi instance with its API
3194 available from http://kodihost/jsonrpc, you can try the following to
3195 have check out a nice cover band.</p>
3196
3197 <p><blockquote><pre>curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
3198   --data-binary '{ "id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "Player.Open",
3199   "params": {"item": { "file":
3200   "plugin://plugin.video.youtube/play/?video_id=LuRGVM9O0qg" } } }' \
3201   http://projector.local/jsonrpc</pre></blockquote></p>
3202
3203 <p>I've extended kodi-stream program to take a video source as its
3204 first argument.  It can now handle direct video links, youtube links
3205 and 'desktop' to stream my desktop to Kodi.  It is almost like a
3206 Chromecast. :)</p>
3207
3208 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3209 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3210 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3211
3212       </div>
3213       <div class="tags">
3214
3215
3216         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3217
3218
3219       </div>
3220     </div>
3221     <div class="padding"></div>
3222
3223     <div class="entry">
3224       <div class="title">
3225         <a href="https://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>
3226       </div>
3227       <div class="date">
3228         31st July 2018
3229       </div>
3230       <div class="body">
3231         <p>For a while now, I have looked for a sensible way to share images
3232 with my family using a self hosted solution, as it is unacceptable to
3233 place images from my personal life under the control of strangers
3234 working for data hoarders like Google or Dropbox.  The last few days I
3235 have drafted an approach that might work out, and I would like to
3236 share it with you.  I would like to publish images on a server under
3237 my control, and point some Internet connected display units using some
3238 free and open standard to the images I published.  As my primary
3239 language is not limited to ASCII, I need to store metadata using
3240 UTF-8.  Many years ago, I hoped to find a digital photo frame capable
3241 of reading a RSS feed with image references (aka using the
3242 &lt;enclosure&gt; RSS tag), but was unable to find a current supplier
3243 of such frames.  In the end I gave up that approach.</p>
3244
3245 <p>Some months ago, I discovered that
3246 <a href="https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/">XScreensaver</a> is able to
3247 read images from a RSS feed, and used it to set up a screen saver on
3248 my home info screen, showing images from the Daily images feed from
3249 NASA.  This proved to work well.  More recently I discovered that
3250 <a href="https://kodi.tv">Kodi</a> (both using
3251 <a href="https://www.openelec.tv/">OpenELEC</a> and
3252 <a href="https://libreelec.tv">LibreELEC</a>) provide the
3253 <a href="https://github.com/grinsted/script.screensaver.feedreader">Feedreader</a>
3254 screen saver capable of reading a RSS feed with images and news.  For
3255 fun, I used it this summer to test Kodi on my parents TV by hooking up
3256 a Raspberry PI unit with LibreELEC, and wanted to provide them with a
3257 screen saver showing selected pictures from my selection.</p>
3258
3259 <p>Armed with motivation and a test photo frame, I set out to generate
3260 a RSS feed for the Kodi instance.  I adjusted my <a
3261 href="https://freedombox.org/">Freedombox</a> instance, created
3262 /var/www/html/privatepictures/, wrote a small Perl script to extract
3263 title and description metadata from the photo files and generate the
3264 RSS file.  I ended up using Perl instead of python, as the
3265 libimage-exiftool-perl Debian package seemed to handle the EXIF/XMP
3266 tags I ended up using, while python3-exif did not.  The relevant EXIF
3267 tags only support ASCII, so I had to find better alternatives.  XMP
3268 seem to have the support I need.</p>
3269
3270 <p>I am a bit unsure which EXIF/XMP tags to use, as I would like to
3271 use tags that can be easily added/updated using normal free software
3272 photo managing software.  I ended up using the tags set using this
3273 exiftool command, as these tags can also be set using digiKam:</p>
3274
3275 <blockquote><pre>
3276 exiftool -headline='The RSS image title' \
3277   -description='The RSS image description.' \
3278   -subject+=for-family photo.jpeg
3279 </pre></blockquote>
3280
3281 <p>I initially tried the "-title" and "keyword" tags, but they were
3282 invisible in digiKam, so I changed to "-headline" and "-subject".  I
3283 use the keyword/subject 'for-family' to flag that the photo should be
3284 shared with my family.  Images with this keyword set are located and
3285 copied into my Freedombox for the RSS generating script to find.</p>
3286
3287 <p>Are there better ways to do this?  Get in touch if you have better
3288 suggestions.</p>
3289
3290 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3291 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3292 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3293
3294       </div>
3295       <div class="tags">
3296
3297
3298         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3299
3300
3301       </div>
3302     </div>
3303     <div class="padding"></div>
3304
3305     <div class="entry">
3306       <div class="title">
3307         <a href="https://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>
3308       </div>
3309       <div class="date">
3310         12th July 2018
3311       </div>
3312       <div class="body">
3313         <p>Last night, I wrote
3314 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">a
3315 recipe to stream a Linux desktop using VLC to a instance of Kodi</a>.
3316 During the day I received valuable feedback, and thanks to the
3317 suggestions I have been able to rewrite the recipe into a much simpler
3318 approach requiring no setup at all.  It is a single script that take
3319 care of it all.</p>
3320
3321 <p>This new script uses GStreamer instead of VLC to capture the
3322 desktop and stream it to Kodi.  This fixed the video quality issue I
3323 saw initially.  It further removes the need to add a m3u file on the
3324 Kodi machine, as it instead connects to
3325 <a href="https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v8">the JSON-RPC API in
3326 Kodi</a> and simply ask Kodi to play from the stream created using
3327 GStreamer.  Streaming the desktop to Kodi now become trivial.  Copy
3328 the script below, run it with the DNS name or IP address of the kodi
3329 server to stream to as the only argument, and watch your screen show
3330 up on the Kodi screen.  Note, it depend on multicast on the local
3331 network, so if you need to stream outside the local network, the
3332 script must be modified.  Also note, I have no idea if audio work, as
3333 I only care about the picture part.</p>
3334
3335 <blockquote><pre>
3336 #!/bin/sh
3337 #
3338 # Stream the Linux desktop view to Kodi.  See
3339 # https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html
3340 # for backgorund information.
3341
3342 # Make sure the stream is stopped in Kodi and the gstreamer process is
3343 # killed if something go wrong (for example if curl is unable to find the
3344 # kodi server).  Do the same when interrupting this script.
3345 kodicmd() {
3346     host="$1"
3347     cmd="$2"
3348     params="$3"
3349     curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
3350          --data-binary "{ \"id\": 1, \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\", \"method\": \"$cmd\", \"params\": $params }" \
3351          "http://$host/jsonrpc"
3352 }
3353 cleanup() {
3354     if [ -n "$kodihost" ] ; then
3355         # Stop the playing when we end
3356         playerid=$(kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.GetActivePlayers "{}" |
3357                             jq .result[].playerid)
3358         kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Stop "{ \"playerid\" : $playerid }" > /dev/null
3359     fi
3360     if [ "$gstpid" ] && kill -0 "$gstpid" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
3361         kill "$gstpid"
3362     fi
3363 }
3364 trap cleanup EXIT INT
3365
3366 if [ -n "$1" ]; then
3367     kodihost=$1
3368     shift
3369 else
3370     kodihost=kodi.local
3371 fi
3372
3373 mcast=239.255.0.1
3374 mcastport=1234
3375 mcastttl=1
3376
3377 pasrc=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | \
3378   cut -d" " -f2|head -1)
3379 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
3380   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
3381   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
3382   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
3383   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
3384   udpsink host=$mcast port=$mcastport ttl-mc=$mcastttl auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
3385   pulsesrc device=$pasrc ! audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux. \
3386   > /dev/null 2>&1 &
3387 gstpid=$!
3388
3389 # Give stream a second to get going
3390 sleep 1
3391
3392 # Ask kodi to start streaming using its JSON-RPC API
3393 kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Open \
3394         "{\"item\": { \"file\": \"udp://@$mcast:$mcastport\" } }" > /dev/null
3395
3396 # wait for gst to end
3397 wait "$gstpid"
3398 </pre></blockquote>
3399
3400 <p>I hope you find the approach useful.  I know I do.</p>
3401
3402 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3403 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3404 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3405
3406       </div>
3407       <div class="tags">
3408
3409
3410         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3411
3412
3413       </div>
3414     </div>
3415     <div class="padding"></div>
3416
3417     <div class="entry">
3418       <div class="title">
3419         <a href="https://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>
3420       </div>
3421       <div class="date">
3422         12th July 2018
3423       </div>
3424       <div class="body">
3425         <p>PS: See
3426 <ahref="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">the
3427 followup post</a> for a even better approach.</p>
3428
3429 <p>A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
3430 my projector connected to Kodi.  I sadly had to admit that I had no
3431 idea, as it was a task I never had tried.  Since then, I have been
3432 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
3433 install on either side.  Today I found a way that seem to kind of
3434 work.  Not great, but it is a start.</p>
3435
3436 <p>I had a look at several approaches, for example
3437 <a href="https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming">using uPnP
3438 DLNA as described in 2011</a>, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
3439 local storage enough to store the stream locally.  This is not going
3440 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
3441 impossible for my friend to get working.</p>
3442
3443 <p>Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
3444 video stream that Kodi could play.  Preferably using
3445 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
3446 side when starting such stream.  Unfortunately, the only recipe I
3447 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
3448 seem to not be supported by Kodi.</p>
3449
3450 <p>On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working!  Unfortunately I
3451 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
3452 sending command and the file on the Kodi server.  But it is showing my
3453 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
3454 the programs I work on.</p>
3455
3456 <p>I did not spend much time investigating codeces.  I combined the
3457 rtp and rtsp recipes from
3458 <a href="https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/">the
3459 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples</a>, and was able to get
3460 this working on the desktop/streaming end.</p>
3461
3462 <blockquote><pre>
3463 vlc screen:// --sout \
3464   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp}'
3465 </pre></blockquote>
3466
3467 <p>I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
3468 same IP address:</p>
3469
3470 <blockquote><pre>
3471 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp \
3472   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
3473 </pre></blockquote>
3474
3475 <p>Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address.  As far
3476 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work.  In other
3477 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
3478 to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
3479 recipe.  To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
3480 file while the VLC stream is running.  The desktop then show up in my
3481 big screen. :)</p>
3482
3483 <p>When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
3484 the audio quality is really bad.  No idea if the problem is package
3485 loss or bad parameters for the transcode.  I do not know VLC nor Kodi
3486 enough to tell.</p>
3487
3488 <p><strong>Update 2018-07-12</strong>: Johannes Schauer send me a few
3489 succestions and reminded me about an important step.  The "screen:"
3490 input source is only available once the vlc-plugin-access-extra
3491 package is installed on Debian.  Without it, you will see this error
3492 message: "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'screen://'.  Check the log
3493 for details."  He further found that it is possible to drop some parts
3494 of the VLC command line to reduce the amount of hardcoded information.
3495 It is also useful to consider using cvlc to avoid having the VLC
3496 window in the desktop view.  In sum, this give us this command line on
3497 the source end
3498
3499 <blockquote><pre>
3500 cvlc screen:// --sout \
3501   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8080/}'
3502 </pre></blockquote>
3503
3504 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
3505
3506 <blockquote><pre>
3507 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/ \
3508   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
3509 </pre></blockquote>
3510
3511 <p>Still bad image quality, though.  But I did discover that streaming
3512 a DVD using dvdsimple:///dev/dvd as the source had excellent video and
3513 audio quality, so I guess the issue is in the input or transcoding
3514 parts, not the rtsp part.  I've tried to change the vb and ab
3515 parameters to use more bandwidth, but it did not make a
3516 difference.</p>
3517
3518 <p>I further received a suggestion from Einar Haraldseid to try using
3519 gstreamer instead of VLC, and this proved to work great!  He also
3520 provided me with the trick to get Kodi to use a multicast stream as
3521 its source.  By using this monstrous oneliner, I can stream my desktop
3522 with good video quality in reasonable framerate to the 239.255.0.1
3523 multicast address on port 1234:
3524
3525 <blockquote><pre>
3526 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
3527   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
3528   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
3529   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
3530   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
3531   udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=1 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
3532   pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | \
3533     grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' |  cut -d" " -f2|head -1) ! \
3534   audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
3535 </pre></blockquote>
3536
3537 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
3538
3539 <blockquote><pre>
3540 echo udp://@239.255.0.1:1234 \
3541   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
3542 </pre></blockquote>
3543
3544 <p>Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source.  It might not
3545 pick the one you need.  This approach will of course lead to trouble
3546 if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
3547 Note the ttl-mc=1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
3548 local network.  If the value is increased, your screen will be
3549 broadcasted further, one network "hop" for each increase (read up on
3550 multicast to learn more. :)!</p>
3551
3552 <p>Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
3553 could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
3554 The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
3555 seem to be doing a better job.</p>
3556
3557 <blockquote><pre>
3558 cvlc screen:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=239.255.0.1,port=1234,sdp=sap}'
3559 </pre></blockquote>
3560
3561 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3562 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3563 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3564
3565       </div>
3566       <div class="tags">
3567
3568
3569         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3570
3571
3572       </div>
3573     </div>
3574     <div class="padding"></div>
3575
3576     <div class="entry">
3577       <div class="title">
3578         <a href="https://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>
3579       </div>
3580       <div class="date">
3581          9th July 2018
3582       </div>
3583       <div class="body">
3584         <p>Five years ago,
3585 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">I
3586 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was</a>, by
3587 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive.  Since
3588 then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
3589 the task a lot easier.  This made me want to repeat the measurement,
3590 to see how much things changed.  Here are the new numbers, for
3591 unstable only this time:
3592
3593 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
3594
3595 <pre>
3596   count MIME type
3597   ----- -----------------------
3598      56 image/jpeg
3599      55 image/png
3600      49 image/tiff
3601      48 image/gif
3602      39 image/bmp
3603      38 text/plain
3604      37 audio/mpeg
3605      34 application/ogg
3606      33 audio/x-flac
3607      32 audio/x-mp3
3608      30 audio/x-wav
3609      30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
3610      29 image/x-portable-pixmap
3611      27 inode/directory
3612      27 image/x-portable-bitmap
3613      27 audio/x-mpeg
3614      26 application/x-ogg
3615      25 audio/x-mpegurl
3616      25 audio/ogg
3617      24 text/html
3618 </pre>
3619
3620 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot: "cat
3621 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk '/^
3622 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"</p>
3623
3624 <p>It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
3625 as the most announced supported MIME type.  These days, thanks to the
3626 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
3627 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
3628 MIME type of the file using "file --mime &lt;filename&gt;", and then
3629 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
3630 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using "appstreamcli
3631 what-provides mimetype &lt;mime-type&gt;.  For example if you, like
3632 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
3633 list like this:</p>
3634
3635 <p><blockquote><pre>
3636 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
3637 Package: anjuta
3638 Package: audacious
3639 Package: baobab
3640 Package: cervisia
3641 Package: chirp
3642 Package: dolphin
3643 Package: doublecmd-common
3644 Package: easytag
3645 Package: enlightenment
3646 Package: ephoto
3647 Package: filelight
3648 Package: gwenview
3649 Package: k4dirstat
3650 Package: kaffeine
3651 Package: kdesvn
3652 Package: kid3
3653 Package: kid3-qt
3654 Package: nautilus
3655 Package: nemo
3656 Package: pcmanfm
3657 Package: pcmanfm-qt
3658 Package: qweborf
3659 Package: ranger
3660 Package: sirikali
3661 Package: spacefm
3662 Package: spacefm
3663 Package: vifm
3664 %
3665 </pre></blockquote></p>
3666
3667 <p>Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
3668 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:</p>
3669
3670 <p><blockquote><pre>
3671 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/vnd.sketchup.skp
3672 Could not find component providing 'mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp'.
3673 %
3674 </pre></blockquote></p>
3675
3676 <p>Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
3677 format:</p>
3678
3679 <p><blockquote><pre>
3680 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/sla|grep Package
3681 Package: cura
3682 Package: meshlab
3683 Package: printrun
3684 %
3685 </pre></blockquote></p>
3686
3687 <p>PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.</p>
3688
3689 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3690 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3691 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3692
3693       </div>
3694       <div class="tags">
3695
3696
3697         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3698
3699
3700       </div>
3701     </div>
3702     <div class="padding"></div>
3703
3704     <div class="entry">
3705       <div class="title">
3706         <a href="https://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>
3707       </div>
3708       <div class="date">
3709          8th July 2018
3710       </div>
3711       <div class="body">
3712         <p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
3713 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
3714 space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'.  I normally
3715 would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install &lt;somepackages&gt;' to
3716 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
3717 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
3718 Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
3719 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually.  I concluded
3720 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
3721 decided to see if I could automate it.  I came up with this small
3722 script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':</p>
3723
3724 <p><blockquote><pre>
3725 #!/bin/sh
3726 #
3727 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
3728 # upgradable package in one lump.  Fetching packages to upgrade using
3729 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
3730 # flag for manual/automatic.
3731
3732 set -e
3733
3734 ignore() {
3735     if [ "$1" ]; then
3736         grep -v "$1"
3737     else
3738         cat
3739     fi
3740 }
3741
3742 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
3743     echo "Upgrading $p"
3744     apt clean
3745     apt install --download-only -y $p
3746     for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
3747         if [ -e "$f" ]; then
3748             dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
3749             break
3750         fi
3751     done
3752 done
3753 </pre></blockquote></p>
3754
3755 <p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
3756 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
3757 downloaded packages using dpkg.  The idea is to upgrade packages
3758 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
3759 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency).  To
3760 use it, simply run it as root from the command line.  If it fail, try
3761 'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again.  This
3762 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
3763 packages.  dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.</p>
3764
3765 <p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
3766 upgrade.  The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
3767 the packages that are simply too large to unpack.  Today this was
3768 'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
3769 problems earlier (like TeX).</p>
3770
3771 <p>Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
3772 alternative ways to handle this.  The "unattended-upgrades
3773 --minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
3774 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
3775 first.  It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
3776 Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
3777 the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.</p>
3778
3779 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3780 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3781 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3782
3783       </div>
3784       <div class="tags">
3785
3786
3787         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3788
3789
3790       </div>
3791     </div>
3792     <div class="padding"></div>
3793
3794     <div class="entry">
3795       <div class="title">
3796         <a href="https://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>
3797       </div>
3798       <div class="date">
3799         13th February 2018
3800       </div>
3801       <div class="body">
3802         <p>A new version of the
3803 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">3D printer slicer
3804 software Cura</a>, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
3805 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid).  I hope you find it
3806 useful.  It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
3807 enter testing tomorrow.  See the
3808 <a href="https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes">release
3809 notes</a> for the list of bug fixes and new features.  Version 3.2
3810 was announced 6 days ago.  We will try to get it into Debian as
3811 well.</p>
3812
3813 <p>More information related to 3D printing is available on the
3814 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting">3D printing</a> and
3815 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer">3D printer</a> wiki pages
3816 in Debian.</p>
3817
3818 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3819 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3820 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3821
3822       </div>
3823       <div class="tags">
3824
3825
3826         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3827
3828
3829       </div>
3830     </div>
3831     <div class="padding"></div>
3832
3833     <div class="entry">
3834       <div class="title">
3835         <a href="https://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>
3836       </div>
3837       <div class="date">
3838         17th December 2017
3839       </div>
3840       <div class="body">
3841         <p>After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
3842 that the nice and user friendly 3D printer slicer software Cura just
3843 entered Debian Unstable.  It consist of five packages,
3844 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">cura</a>,
3845 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine">cura-engine</a>,
3846 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus">libarcus</a>,
3847 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials">fdm-materials</a>,
3848 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar">libsavitar</a> and
3849 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium">uranium</a>.  The last
3850 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday.  This should make
3851 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
3852 3D printers.  My nearest 3D printer is an Ultimaker 2+, so it will
3853 make life easier for at least me. :)</p>
3854
3855 <p>The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
3856 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages.  With the introduction
3857 of Cura, Debian is up to three 3D printer slicers at your service,
3858 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa.  If you own or have access to a 3D
3859 printer, give it a go. :)</p>
3860
3861 <p>The 3D printer software is maintained by the 3D printer Debian
3862 team, flocking together on the
3863 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general">3dprinter-general</a>
3864 mailing list and the
3865 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting">#debian-3dprinting</a>
3866 IRC channel.</p>
3867
3868 <p>The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
3869 version 3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
3870 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.</p>
3871
3872       </div>
3873       <div class="tags">
3874
3875
3876         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3877
3878
3879       </div>
3880     </div>
3881     <div class="padding"></div>
3882
3883     <div class="entry">
3884       <div class="title">
3885         <a href="https://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>
3886       </div>
3887       <div class="date">
3888          9th October 2017
3889       </div>
3890       <div class="body">
3891         <p>At my nearby maker space,
3892 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
3893 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
3894 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
3895 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
3896 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
3897 as the software involved,
3898 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
3899 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
3900 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
3901 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
3902 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
3903 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
3904 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
3905
3906 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
3907 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
3908 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
3909 on
3910 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3911 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
3912
3913 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
3914 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
3915 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
3916 upstream version.</p>
3917
3918 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
3919 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
3920 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
3921 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
3922 Debian, check out
3923 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
3924 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
3925 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
3926
3927 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3928 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3929 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3930
3931       </div>
3932       <div class="tags">
3933
3934
3935         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3936
3937
3938       </div>
3939     </div>
3940     <div class="padding"></div>
3941
3942     <div class="entry">
3943       <div class="title">
3944         <a href="https://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>
3945       </div>
3946       <div class="date">
3947         29th September 2017
3948       </div>
3949       <div class="body">
3950         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
3951 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
3952 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
3953 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
3954 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
3955 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
3956 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
3957 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
3958 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
3959 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
3960 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
3961 listen.</p>
3962
3963 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
3964 visualizing this information up and running for
3965 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
3966 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
3967 library.  The solution is based on the
3968 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
3969 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
3970 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
3971 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
3972 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
3973 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
3974 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
3975 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
3976
3977 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
3978 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
3979 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
3980 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
3981 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
3982 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
3983 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
3984 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
3985
3986 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
3987 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
3988 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
3989 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
3990 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
3991 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
3992 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
3993 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
3994 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
3995 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
3996 mentioned in
3997 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
3998 issue for the topic</a>.
3999
4000 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
4001
4002       </div>
4003       <div class="tags">
4004
4005
4006         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4007
4008
4009       </div>
4010     </div>
4011     <div class="padding"></div>
4012
4013     <div class="entry">
4014       <div class="title">
4015         <a href="https://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>
4016       </div>
4017       <div class="date">
4018         24th September 2017
4019       </div>
4020       <div class="body">
4021         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
4022 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
4023 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
4024 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
4025 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
4026 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
4027 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
4028 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
4029 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
4030
4031 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
4032 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
4033 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
4034 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
4035
4036 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
4037 clone of two python scripts:</p>
4038
4039 <ol>
4040
4041 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
4042   testing).</li>
4043
4044 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
4045   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
4046
4047 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
4048   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
4049
4050 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
4051
4052 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
4053   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
4054   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
4055
4056 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
4057   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
4058
4059 </ol>
4060
4061 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
4062 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
4063 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
4064 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
4065 very cheaply
4066 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
4067 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
4068 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
4069
4070 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
4071 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
4072 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
4073 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
4074 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
4075 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
4076 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
4077 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
4078
4079 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
4080 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
4081 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
4082 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
4083 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
4084 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
4085 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
4086 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
4087 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
4088 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
4089 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
4090 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
4091
4092       </div>
4093       <div class="tags">
4094
4095
4096         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4097
4098
4099       </div>
4100     </div>
4101     <div class="padding"></div>
4102
4103     <div class="entry">
4104       <div class="title">
4105         <a href="https://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>
4106       </div>
4107       <div class="date">
4108          9th August 2017
4109       </div>
4110       <div class="body">
4111         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
4112 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
4113 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
4114 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
4115 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
4116 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
4117 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
4118
4119 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
4120 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
4121 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
4122 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
4123 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
4124 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
4125 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
4126 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
4127 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
4128 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
4129 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
4130 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
4131 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
4132
4133 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
4134 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
4135 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
4136 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
4137 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
4138 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
4139 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
4140 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
4141 collector for a few days now.</p>
4142
4143 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
4144
4145 <ol>
4146
4147 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
4148
4149 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
4150 <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>
4151
4152 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
4153
4154 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
4155 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
4156 found a GSM station).</li>
4157
4158 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
4159
4160 </ol>
4161
4162 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
4163 running, I decided to package
4164 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
4165 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
4166 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
4167 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
4168 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
4169
4170 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
4171 commercial tools like
4172 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
4173 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
4174 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
4175 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
4176 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
4177 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
4178 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
4179 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
4180 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
4181 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
4182 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
4183 of government officials...</p>
4184
4185 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
4186 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
4187 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
4188 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
4189 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
4190 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
4191 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
4192 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
4193 one frequency?</p>
4194
4195       </div>
4196       <div class="tags">
4197
4198
4199         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4200
4201
4202       </div>
4203     </div>
4204     <div class="padding"></div>
4205
4206     <div class="entry">
4207       <div class="title">
4208         <a href="https://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>
4209       </div>
4210       <div class="date">
4211         25th July 2017
4212       </div>
4213       <div class="body">
4214         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
4215
4216 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
4217 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
4218 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
4219 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
4220 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
4221 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
4222 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
4223 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
4224 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
4225 as a web page</a>.</p>
4226
4227 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
4228 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
4229 in
4230 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
4231 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
4232 and
4233 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
4234 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
4235 project.  I hope
4236 "<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
4237 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
4238
4239       </div>
4240       <div class="tags">
4241
4242
4243         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4244
4245
4246       </div>
4247     </div>
4248     <div class="padding"></div>
4249
4250     <div class="entry">
4251       <div class="title">
4252         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</a>
4253       </div>
4254       <div class="date">
4255          3rd June 2017
4256       </div>
4257       <div class="body">
4258         <p><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html">Aftenposten
4259 melder i dag</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
4260 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
4261 like.  Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
4262 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
4263 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium</a> ville gjort en bedre
4264 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet.  Det kan se slik ut.</p>
4265
4266 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:</p>
4267
4268 <blockquote>
4269 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
4270 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
4271 for eksempel flykningekrisen.</p>
4272
4273 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
4274 på temaet:</p>
4275 <ol>
4276 <li>Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
4277 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
4278 </ol>
4279
4280 </blockquote>
4281
4282 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:</p>
4283
4284 <blockquote>
4285 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
4286 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
4287 til dømes *flykningekrisen.</p>
4288
4289 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
4290 temaet:</p>
4291
4292 <ol>
4293 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC</li>
4294 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015</li>
4295 </ol>
4296
4297 </blockquote>
4298
4299 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
4300 ekstra språksjekk.  Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
4301 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen.  Jeg mistenker dog at
4302 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
4303 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
4304 det er kanskje flisespikking.  Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
4305 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.</p>
4306
4307       </div>
4308       <div class="tags">
4309
4310
4311         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
4312
4313
4314       </div>
4315     </div>
4316     <div class="padding"></div>
4317
4318     <div class="entry">
4319       <div class="title">
4320         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
4321       </div>
4322       <div class="date">
4323          9th March 2017
4324       </div>
4325       <div class="body">
4326         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
4327 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
4328 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
4329 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
4330 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
4331 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
4332 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
4333 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
4334
4335 <p><blockquote>
4336 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
4337 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
4338 </blockquote></p>
4339
4340 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
4341 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
4342 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
4343 are noticed.</p>
4344
4345 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
4346 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
4347 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
4348 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
4349 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
4350 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
4351
4352 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
4353 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
4354 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
4355 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
4356 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
4357 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
4358
4359 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
4360
4361 <p><blockquote><pre>
4362 [...]
4363 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
4364 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
4365         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
4366         age:    7863311
4367         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
4368         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
4369         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
4370         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
4371         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
4372         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
4373         per-op statistics
4374                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4375              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
4376              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
4377               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
4378               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
4379             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
4380                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
4381                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
4382               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
4383                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
4384              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
4385                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
4386               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
4387                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
4388               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
4389                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
4390              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
4391          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
4392               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
4393               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
4394             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
4395               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4396
4397 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
4398 [...]
4399 </pre></blockquote></p>
4400
4401 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
4402 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
4403 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
4404 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
4405 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
4406 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
4407 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
4408 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
4409 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
4410 mount options.</p>
4411
4412 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
4413 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
4414 But according to
4415 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
4416 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
4417 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
4418 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
4419 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
4420 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
4421
4422 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
4423 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
4424 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
4425 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
4426 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
4427
4428       </div>
4429       <div class="tags">
4430
4431
4432         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
4433
4434
4435       </div>
4436     </div>
4437     <div class="padding"></div>
4438
4439     <div class="entry">
4440       <div class="title">
4441         <a href="https://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>
4442       </div>
4443       <div class="date">
4444          3rd March 2017
4445       </div>
4446       <div class="body">
4447         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
4448 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
4449 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
4450 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
4451 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
4452 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
4453 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
4454 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
4455 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
4456
4457 <p><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
4458
4459 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
4460 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
4461 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
4462 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
4463 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
4464 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
4465 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
4466 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
4467
4468       </div>
4469       <div class="tags">
4470
4471
4472         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4473
4474
4475       </div>
4476     </div>
4477     <div class="padding"></div>
4478
4479     <div class="entry">
4480       <div class="title">
4481         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
4482       </div>
4483       <div class="date">
4484          1st March 2017
4485       </div>
4486       <div class="body">
4487         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
4488 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
4489 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
4490 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
4491 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
4492 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
4493 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
4494 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
4495 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
4496 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
4497 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
4498
4499 <blockquote><pre>
4500 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4501   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
4502   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
4503      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4504      sleep 1; \
4505   done
4506 300
4507 0+1 oppføringer inn
4508 0+1 oppføringer ut
4509 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
4510 4
4511 8
4512 12
4513 17
4514 21
4515 %
4516 </pre></blockquote>
4517
4518 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
4519 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
4520 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
4521 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
4522
4523 <blockquote><pre>
4524 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4525   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
4526   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
4527      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4528      sleep 1; \
4529   done
4530 1079
4531 0+1 oppføringer inn
4532 0+1 oppføringer ut
4533 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
4534 433
4535 1028
4536 1031
4537 1035
4538 1038
4539 %
4540 </pre></blockquote>
4541
4542 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
4543 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
4544
4545 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
4546 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
4547 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
4548 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
4549 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
4550 post.</p>
4551
4552       </div>
4553       <div class="tags">
4554
4555
4556         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4557
4558
4559       </div>
4560     </div>
4561     <div class="padding"></div>
4562
4563     <div class="entry">
4564       <div class="title">
4565         <a href="https://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>
4566       </div>
4567       <div class="date">
4568          9th January 2017
4569       </div>
4570       <div class="body">
4571         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
4572 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
4573 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
4574 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
4575 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
4576 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
4577 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
4578 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
4579 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
4580 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
4581 this:
4582
4583 <p><pre>
4584 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
4585  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
4586  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
4587  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
4588  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
4589  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
4590  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
4591  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
4592  8  * * *
4593  9  * * *
4594 [...]
4595 </pre></p>
4596
4597 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
4598 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
4599 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
4600 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
4601 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
4602 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
4603 traceroute request.</p>
4604
4605 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
4606 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
4607 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
4608 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
4609 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
4610
4611 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
4612 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
4613 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
4614 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
4615 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
4616 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
4617 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
4618 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
4619 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
4620
4621 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
4622 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
4623 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
4624 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
4625 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
4626 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
4627 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
4628 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
4629 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
4630 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
4631 render the page (in HAR format using
4632 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
4633 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
4634 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
4635 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
4636 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
4637
4638 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
4639 src="https://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>
4640
4641 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
4642 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
4643 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
4644 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
4645 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
4646 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
4647 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
4648 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
4649 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
4650 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
4651 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
4652 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
4653 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
4654 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
4655
4656 <p align="center"><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
4657 src="https://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>
4658
4659 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
4660 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
4661 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
4662 question.
4663 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
4664 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
4665 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
4666 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
4667 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
4668 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
4669 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
4670
4671 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
4672 src="https://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>
4673
4674 <p>In the process, I came across the
4675 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
4676 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
4677 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
4678 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
4679 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
4680 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
4681 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
4682 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
4683 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
4684 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
4685 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
4686 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
4687 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
4688 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
4689
4690 <p align="center"><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
4691 src="https://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>
4692
4693 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
4694 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
4695 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
4696 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
4697
4698 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
4699 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
4700 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
4701 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
4702 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
4703 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
4704 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
4705
4706 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
4707 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
4708 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
4709 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
4710 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
4711 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
4712 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
4713
4714 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
4715 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
4716 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
4717 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
4718
4719 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4720 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4721 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4722
4723       </div>
4724       <div class="tags">
4725
4726
4727         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4728
4729
4730       </div>
4731     </div>
4732     <div class="padding"></div>
4733
4734     <div class="entry">
4735       <div class="title">
4736         <a href="https://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>
4737       </div>
4738       <div class="date">
4739         23rd December 2016
4740       </div>
4741       <div class="body">
4742         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
4743 readers probably know, I have been working on the
4744 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
4745 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
4746 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
4747 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
4748 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
4749 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
4750 metadata format.  And today,
4751 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
4752 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
4753 ie using fnmatch():</p>
4754
4755 <p><pre>
4756 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
4757   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
4758 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
4759 Name: pymissile
4760 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
4761 Package: pymissile
4762 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
4763 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
4764 Name: libnxt
4765 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
4766 Package: libnxt
4767 ---
4768 Identifier: t2n [generic]
4769 Name: t2n
4770 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
4771 Package: t2n
4772 ---
4773 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
4774 Name: python-nxt
4775 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
4776 Package: python-nxt
4777 ---
4778 Identifier: nbc [generic]
4779 Name: nbc
4780 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
4781 Package: nbc
4782 %
4783 </pre></p>
4784
4785 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
4786 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
4787
4788 <p><pre>
4789 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
4790 pymissile
4791 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
4792 libnxt
4793 nbc
4794 python-nxt
4795 t2n
4796 %
4797 </pre></p>
4798
4799 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
4800 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
4801
4802 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
4803 make the most of the hardware they have, please help
4804 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
4805 metadata for your package following the guidelines</a> documented in
4806 the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such information, among the
4807 several hundred hardware specific packages in Debian. The Isenkram
4808 database on the other hand contain 101 packages, mostly related to USB
4809 dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware mapping in AppStream are
4810 LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as part of my involvement in
4811 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
4812 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
4813 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
4814 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
4815 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
4816 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
4817 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
4818 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
4819 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
4820
4821 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4822 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4823 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4824
4825       </div>
4826       <div class="tags">
4827
4828
4829         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4830
4831
4832       </div>
4833     </div>
4834     <div class="padding"></div>
4835
4836     <div class="entry">
4837       <div class="title">
4838         <a href="https://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>
4839       </div>
4840       <div class="date">
4841         20th December 2016
4842       </div>
4843       <div class="body">
4844         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
4845 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
4846 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
4847 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
4848 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
4849 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
4850 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
4851 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
4852 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
4853 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
4854
4855 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
4856
4857 <p><pre>
4858 % isenkram-lookup
4859 bluez
4860 cheese
4861 ethtool
4862 fprintd
4863 fprintd-demo
4864 gkrellm-thinkbat
4865 hdapsd
4866 libpam-fprintd
4867 pidgin-blinklight
4868 thinkfan
4869 tlp
4870 tp-smapi-dkms
4871 tp-smapi-source
4872 tpb
4873 %
4874 </pre></p>
4875
4876 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
4877 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
4878 I have all the firmware my machine need:
4879
4880 <p><pre>
4881 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4882 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
4883 %
4884 </pre></p>
4885
4886 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
4887 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
4888 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
4889 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
4890 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
4891 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
4892 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
4893 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
4894
4895 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
4896 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
4897 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
4898
4899 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
4900 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
4901 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
4902 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
4903 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
4904 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
4905 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
4906 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
4907 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
4908 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
4909 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
4910 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
4911 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
4912 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
4913 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
4914 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
4915 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
4916 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
4917 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
4918 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
4919 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
4920 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
4921 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
4922 zd1211-firmware</p>
4923
4924 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
4925 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
4926 maintainer to
4927 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
4928 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
4929 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
4930 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
4931
4932 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
4933 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
4934 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
4935 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
4936 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
4937
4938       </div>
4939       <div class="tags">
4940
4941
4942         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4943
4944
4945       </div>
4946     </div>
4947     <div class="padding"></div>
4948
4949     <div class="entry">
4950       <div class="title">
4951         <a href="https://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>
4952       </div>
4953       <div class="date">
4954         11th December 2016
4955       </div>
4956       <div class="body">
4957         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
4958
4959 <p>In my early years, I played
4960 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
4961 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
4962 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
4963 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
4964 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
4965 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
4966 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
4967 small.</p>
4968
4969 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
4970 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
4971 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
4972 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
4973 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
4974 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
4975 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
4976 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
4977 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
4978
4979 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
4980 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
4981 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
4982 advantages of the
4983 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
4984 where information about each planet is easily available with common
4985 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
4986 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
4987 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
4988 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
4989 after less then a week.</p>
4990
4991 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
4992 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
4993 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
4994
4995 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4996 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4997 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4998
4999       </div>
5000       <div class="tags">
5001
5002
5003         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
5004
5005
5006       </div>
5007     </div>
5008     <div class="padding"></div>
5009
5010     <div class="entry">
5011       <div class="title">
5012         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
5013       </div>
5014       <div class="date">
5015         25th November 2016
5016       </div>
5017       <div class="body">
5018         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
5019 installation system, observing how using
5020 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
5021 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
5022 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
5023 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
5024 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
5025 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
5026 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
5027 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
5028 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
5029 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
5030 up the process make perfect sense.
5031
5032 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
5033 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
5034 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
5035 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
5036 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
5037 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
5038 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
5039 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
5040 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
5041 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
5042
5043 <blockquote><pre>
5044 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
5045 </pre></blockquote>
5046
5047 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
5048 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
5049 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
5050 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
5051 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
5052 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
5053 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
5054 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
5055 tested its impact.</p>
5056
5057
5058       </div>
5059       <div class="tags">
5060
5061
5062         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5063
5064
5065       </div>
5066     </div>
5067     <div class="padding"></div>
5068
5069     <div class="entry">
5070       <div class="title">
5071         <a href="https://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>
5072       </div>
5073       <div class="date">
5074         24th November 2016
5075       </div>
5076       <div class="body">
5077         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
5078 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
5079 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
5080 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
5081 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
5082 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
5083 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
5084 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
5085 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
5086 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
5087 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
5088 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
5089 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
5090 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
5091 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
5092 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
5093 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
5094 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
5095 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
5096
5097 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
5098 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
5099 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
5100 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
5101 api.apertium.org.  Se
5102 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
5103 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
5104 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
5105 nynorsk.</p>
5106
5107 <hr/>
5108
5109 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
5110 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
5111 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
5112 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
5113 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
5114 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
5115 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
5116 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
5117 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
5118 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
5119 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
5120 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
5121 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
5122 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
5123 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
5124 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
5125 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
5126 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
5127 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
5128
5129 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
5130 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
5131 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
5132 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
5133 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
5134 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
5135 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
5136 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
5137 nynorsk.</p>
5138
5139       </div>
5140       <div class="tags">
5141
5142
5143         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
5144
5145
5146       </div>
5147     </div>
5148     <div class="padding"></div>
5149
5150     <div class="entry">
5151       <div class="title">
5152         <a href="https://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>
5153       </div>
5154       <div class="date">
5155         13th November 2016
5156       </div>
5157       <div class="body">
5158         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
5159 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
5160 multi-threaded program, finally
5161 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
5162 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
5163 months since
5164 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
5165 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
5166 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
5167 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
5168 JavaScript libraries.</p>
5169
5170 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
5171
5172 <p><blockquote>
5173 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
5174 </blockquote></p>
5175
5176 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
5177 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
5178 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
5179 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
5180 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
5181
5182 <p><blockquote>
5183 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
5184 </blockquote></p>
5185
5186 <p>See the project home page and the
5187 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
5188 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
5189 working.</p>
5190
5191       </div>
5192       <div class="tags">
5193
5194
5195         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5196
5197
5198       </div>
5199     </div>
5200     <div class="padding"></div>
5201
5202     <div class="entry">
5203       <div class="title">
5204         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
5205       </div>
5206       <div class="date">
5207          4th November 2016
5208       </div>
5209       <div class="body">
5210         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
5211 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
5212 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
5213 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
5214 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
5215 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
5216 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
5217 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
5218 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
5219 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
5220 and had
5221 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
5222 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
5223 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
5224 loved ones. :)</p>
5225
5226 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
5227 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
5228 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
5229 building
5230 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
5231 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
5232 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
5233 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
5234 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
5235 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
5236 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
5237 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
5238
5239 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
5240
5241 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
5242 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
5243 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
5244 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
5245 the battery status run low:</p>
5246
5247 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
5248    <source src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
5249 </video></p>
5250
5251 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
5252 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
5253
5254 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
5255 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
5256 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
5257 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
5258 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
5259 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
5260 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
5261 should.</p>
5262
5263       </div>
5264       <div class="tags">
5265
5266
5267         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
5268
5269
5270       </div>
5271     </div>
5272     <div class="padding"></div>
5273
5274     <div class="entry">
5275       <div class="title">
5276         <a href="https://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>
5277       </div>
5278       <div class="date">
5279         10th October 2016
5280       </div>
5281       <div class="body">
5282         <p>In July
5283 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
5284 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
5285 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
5286 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
5287
5288 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
5289 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
5290 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
5291 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
5292 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
5293 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
5294 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
5295 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
5296 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
5297 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
5298 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
5299 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
5300 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
5301 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
5302 time.</p>
5303
5304 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
5305 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
5306 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
5307 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
5308 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
5309 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
5310 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
5311
5312 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
5313 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
5314 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
5315 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
5316 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
5317 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
5318 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
5319 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
5320 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
5321 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
5322
5323 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
5324
5325 <ol>
5326
5327 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
5328 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
5329 know, so you need to install it.
5330
5331 <pre>
5332 apt install git tor chromium
5333 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
5334 </pre></li>
5335
5336 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
5337 block below.</li>
5338
5339 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
5340 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
5341
5342 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
5343 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
5344 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
5345 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
5346 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
5347
5348 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
5349 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
5350 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
5351 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
5352 a associated contact database.</li>
5353
5354 </ol>
5355
5356 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
5357 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
5358 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
5359 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
5360 example
5361 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
5362 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
5363 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
5364 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
5365 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
5366 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
5367 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
5368 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
5369 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
5370 working on Debian Stable.</p>
5371
5372 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
5373 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
5374 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
5375
5376 <pre>
5377 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
5378 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
5379 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
5380 --- a/js/background.js
5381 +++ b/js/background.js
5382 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
5383          });
5384      });
5385
5386 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
5387 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
5388      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
5389 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
5390 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
5391      var messageReceiver;
5392      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
5393          if (messageReceiver) {
5394 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
5395 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
5396 --- a/js/expire.js
5397 +++ b/js/expire.js
5398 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
5399  ;(function() {
5400      'use strict';
5401 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
5402 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
5403
5404      window.extension = window.extension || {};
5405
5406 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
5407 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
5408 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
5409 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
5410 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
5411              return {
5412                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
5413                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
5414 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
5415 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
5416 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
5417              };
5418          },
5419          clearQR: function() {
5420 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
5421 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
5422 --- a/options.html
5423 +++ b/options.html
5424 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
5425          &lt;div class='nav'>
5426            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
5427            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
5428 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
5429 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
5430 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
5431 +
5432 +         &lt;/div>
5433            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
5434            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
5435            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
5436 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
5437 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
5438 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
5439 +#!/bin/sh
5440 +set -e
5441 +cd $(dirname $0)
5442 +mkdir -p userdata
5443 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
5444 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
5445 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
5446 +fi
5447 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
5448 +exec chromium \
5449 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
5450 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
5451 EOF
5452 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
5453 </pre>
5454
5455 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5456 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5457 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5458
5459       </div>
5460       <div class="tags">
5461
5462
5463         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5464
5465
5466       </div>
5467     </div>
5468     <div class="padding"></div>
5469
5470     <div class="entry">
5471       <div class="title">
5472         <a href="https://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>
5473       </div>
5474       <div class="date">
5475          7th October 2016
5476       </div>
5477       <div class="body">
5478         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
5479 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
5480 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
5481 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
5482 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
5483 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
5484 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
5485 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
5486 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
5487 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
5488 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
5489 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
5490 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
5491
5492 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
5493 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
5494 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
5495 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
5496 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
5497 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
5498
5499 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
5500 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
5501 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
5502 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
5503 identifiers.</p>
5504
5505 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
5506 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
5507 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
5508 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
5509 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
5510 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
5511 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
5512 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
5513 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
5514 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
5515 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
5516 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
5517 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
5518 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
5519
5520 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
5521 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
5522 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
5523 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
5524 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
5525 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
5526 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
5527
5528 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
5529 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
5530 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
5531 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
5532 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
5533 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
5534 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
5535 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
5536 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
5537 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
5538 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
5539 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
5540 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
5541 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
5542 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
5543 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
5544 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
5545
5546 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
5547 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
5548 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
5549 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
5550 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
5551 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
5552 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
5553
5554 <p><pre>
5555 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
5556     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
5557 </pre></p>
5558
5559 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
5560 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
5561 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
5562 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
5563 to detect this?</p>
5564
5565 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
5566 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
5567 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
5568 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
5569 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
5570 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
5571 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
5572 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
5573 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
5574 directly if no such class exist.</p>
5575
5576 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
5577 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
5578 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
5579
5580 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
5581 please join us on our IRC channel
5582 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
5583 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
5584 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
5585 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
5586
5587 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5588 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5589 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5590
5591       </div>
5592       <div class="tags">
5593
5594
5595         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>.
5596
5597
5598       </div>
5599     </div>
5600     <div class="padding"></div>
5601
5602     <div class="entry">
5603       <div class="title">
5604         <a href="https://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>
5605       </div>
5606       <div class="date">
5607         30th August 2016
5608       </div>
5609       <div class="body">
5610         <p>In April we
5611 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
5612 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
5613 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
5614 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
5615 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
5616 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
5617 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
5618 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
5619 contributing using
5620 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
5621 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
5622 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
5623 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
5624 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
5625 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
5626 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
5627
5628 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
5629 electronic form.</p>
5630
5631       </div>
5632       <div class="tags">
5633
5634
5635         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5636
5637
5638       </div>
5639     </div>
5640     <div class="padding"></div>
5641
5642     <div class="entry">
5643       <div class="title">
5644         <a href="https://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>
5645       </div>
5646       <div class="date">
5647         11th August 2016
5648       </div>
5649       <div class="body">
5650         <p>This summer, I read a great article
5651 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
5652 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
5653 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
5654 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
5655 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
5656 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
5657 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
5658 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
5659 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
5660 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
5661 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
5662 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
5663
5664 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
5665 get the system into Debian.  I
5666 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
5667 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
5668 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
5669 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
5670 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
5671 profiling information included in the source package.
5672 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
5673
5674 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
5675 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
5676
5677 <p><blockquote><pre>
5678 coz run --- program-to-run
5679 </pre></blockquote></p>
5680
5681 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
5682 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
5683 most, use a web browser and either point it to
5684 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
5685 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
5686 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
5687 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
5688 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
5689 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
5690 targeted experiments.</p>
5691
5692 <p>A video published by ACM
5693 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
5694 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
5695 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
5696 titled
5697 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
5698 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
5699
5700 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
5701 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
5702 because it uses a
5703 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
5704 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
5705 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
5706 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
5707
5708 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
5709 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
5710 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
5711 C++ libraries.</p>
5712
5713       </div>
5714       <div class="tags">
5715
5716
5717         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
5718
5719
5720       </div>
5721     </div>
5722     <div class="padding"></div>
5723
5724     <div class="entry">
5725       <div class="title">
5726         <a href="https://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>
5727       </div>
5728       <div class="date">
5729          7th July 2016
5730       </div>
5731       <div class="body">
5732         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
5733 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
5734 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
5735 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
5736 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
5737 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
5738 microphone The initial idea had been to just
5739 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
5740 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
5741 until a few days ago.</p>
5742
5743 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
5744 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
5745 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
5746 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
5747 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
5748 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
5749 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
5750
5751 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
5752 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
5753 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
5754 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
5755 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
5756 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
5757 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
5758 him.</p>
5759
5760 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
5761 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
5762 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
5763 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
5764 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
5765 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
5766 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
5767 devices it would work for.</p>
5768
5769 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
5770 followed some instructions
5771 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
5772 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
5773 machine with Debian testing:</p>
5774
5775 <p><pre>
5776 adb reboot-bootloader
5777 fastboot oem rebootRUU
5778 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
5779 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
5780 fastboot reboot
5781 </pre></p>
5782
5783 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
5784 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
5785 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
5786 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
5787 too.</p>
5788
5789 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
5790 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
5791 like this:</p>
5792
5793 <p><pre>
5794 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
5795 </pre>
5796
5797 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
5798 this:</p>
5799
5800 <p><pre>
5801 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
5802 </pre></p>
5803
5804 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
5805 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
5806 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
5807 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
5808 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
5809
5810       </div>
5811       <div class="tags">
5812
5813
5814         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5815
5816
5817       </div>
5818     </div>
5819     <div class="padding"></div>
5820
5821     <div class="entry">
5822       <div class="title">
5823         <a href="https://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>
5824       </div>
5825       <div class="date">
5826          3rd July 2016
5827       </div>
5828       <div class="body">
5829         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
5830 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
5831 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
5832 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
5833 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
5834 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
5835 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
5836 Github source, compared it to the source in
5837 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
5838 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
5839 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
5840 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
5841 the recipe how I did it.</p>
5842
5843 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
5844
5845 <pre>
5846 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
5847 </pre>
5848
5849 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
5850 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
5851
5852 <pre>
5853 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
5854 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
5855 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
5856 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
5857 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
5858          });
5859      });
5860
5861 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
5862 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
5863 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
5864 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
5865      var messageReceiver;
5866      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
5867          if (messageReceiver) {
5868 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
5869 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
5870 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
5871 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
5872  ;(function() {
5873      'use strict';
5874 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
5875 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
5876
5877      window.extension = window.extension || {};
5878
5879 EOF
5880 </pre>
5881
5882 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
5883 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
5884 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
5885 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
5886
5887 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
5888 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
5889
5890 <pre>
5891 #!/bin/sh
5892 cd $(dirname $0)
5893 mkdir -p userdata
5894 exec chromium \
5895   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
5896   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
5897 </pre>
5898
5899 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
5900 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
5901 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
5902 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
5903 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
5904
5905 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
5906 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
5907 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
5908 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
5909 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
5910 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
5911 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
5912 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
5913 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
5914 Signal from my laptop.
5915
5916 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
5917 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
5918 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
5919 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
5920 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
5921 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
5922 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
5923 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
5924 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
5925 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
5926 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
5927 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
5928
5929 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
5930 on this topic in
5931 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
5932 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
5933 phone</a>.</p>
5934
5935       </div>
5936       <div class="tags">
5937
5938
5939         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5940
5941
5942       </div>
5943     </div>
5944     <div class="padding"></div>
5945
5946     <div class="entry">
5947       <div class="title">
5948         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
5949       </div>
5950       <div class="date">
5951          6th June 2016
5952       </div>
5953       <div class="body">
5954         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
5955 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
5956 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
5957 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
5958 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
5959 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
5960 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
5961 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
5962 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
5963
5964 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
5965 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
5966 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
5967 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
5968 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
5969 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
5970 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
5971
5972 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
5973 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
5974 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
5975 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
5976 toten and parole.</p>
5977
5978 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
5979 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
5980 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
5981 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
5982 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
5983 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
5984 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
5985 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
5986 formats.</p>
5987
5988       </div>
5989       <div class="tags">
5990
5991
5992         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5993
5994
5995       </div>
5996     </div>
5997     <div class="padding"></div>
5998
5999     <div class="entry">
6000       <div class="title">
6001         <a href="https://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>
6002       </div>
6003       <div class="date">
6004          5th June 2016
6005       </div>
6006       <div class="body">
6007         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
6008 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
6009 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
6010 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
6011 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
6012 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
6013 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
6014 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
6015 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
6016 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
6017 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
6018 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
6019 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
6020 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
6021 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
6022 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
6023 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
6024 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
6025 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
6026 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
6027
6028 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
6029 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
6030 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
6031 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
6032 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
6033 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
6034 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
6035 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
6036 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
6037 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
6038 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
6039 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
6040 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
6041 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
6042
6043 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
6044 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
6045 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
6046 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
6047 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
6048 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
6049 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
6050 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
6051
6052 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
6053 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
6054 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
6055 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
6056 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
6057 information is collected from
6058 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
6059 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
6060 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
6061 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
6062 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
6063 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
6064 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
6065 type (preferably
6066 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
6067 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
6068 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
6069 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
6070
6071 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
6072 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
6073 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
6074
6075 <p><blockquote><pre>
6076 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
6077 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
6078   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
6079     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
6080     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
6081     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
6082   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
6083 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
6084 </pre></blockquote></p>
6085
6086 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
6087 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
6088 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
6089 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
6090
6091 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
6092 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
6093 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
6094
6095 <p><blockquote><pre>
6096 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
6097 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
6098 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
6099 %
6100 </pre></blockquote></p>
6101
6102 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
6103 MimeType= line.</p>
6104
6105 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
6106 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
6107 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
6108 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
6109 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
6110 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
6111 fixed. :)</p>
6112
6113       </div>
6114       <div class="tags">
6115
6116
6117         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6118
6119
6120       </div>
6121     </div>
6122     <div class="padding"></div>
6123
6124     <div class="entry">
6125       <div class="title">
6126         <a href="https://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>
6127       </div>
6128       <div class="date">
6129         25th May 2016
6130       </div>
6131       <div class="body">
6132         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
6133 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
6134 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
6135 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
6136 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
6137 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
6138 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
6139 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
6140 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
6141 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
6142 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
6143 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
6144
6145 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
6146 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
6147 is going away and is generally being replaced by
6148 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
6149 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
6150 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
6151 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
6152 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
6153 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
6154 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
6155 and see if it is recognised.</p>
6156
6157 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
6158 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
6159 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
6160
6161 <p><blockquote><pre>
6162 % isenkram-lookup
6163 bluez
6164 cheese
6165 fprintd
6166 fprintd-demo
6167 gkrellm-thinkbat
6168 hdapsd
6169 libpam-fprintd
6170 pidgin-blinklight
6171 thinkfan
6172 tleds
6173 tp-smapi-dkms
6174 tp-smapi-source
6175 tpb
6176 %p
6177 </pre></blockquote></p>
6178
6179 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
6180 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
6181 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
6182 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
6183 See
6184 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
6185 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
6186
6187       </div>
6188       <div class="tags">
6189
6190
6191         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6192
6193
6194       </div>
6195     </div>
6196     <div class="padding"></div>
6197
6198     <div class="entry">
6199       <div class="title">
6200         <a href="https://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>
6201       </div>
6202       <div class="date">
6203         23rd May 2016
6204       </div>
6205       <div class="body">
6206         <p>Yesterday I updated the
6207 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
6208 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
6209 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
6210 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
6211 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
6212 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
6213 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
6214 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
6215 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
6216 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
6217
6218 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
6219 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
6220 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
6221 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
6222 capacity.</p>
6223
6224 <p align="center"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
6225
6226 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
6227 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
6228 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
6229 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
6230
6231 <p align="center"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
6232
6233 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
6234 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
6235 shrinking. :(</p>
6236
6237 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
6238 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
6239 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
6240 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
6241 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
6242 machine.</p>
6243
6244 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
6245 check out the
6246 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
6247 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
6248 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
6249 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
6250 Patches are very welcome.</p>
6251
6252 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6253 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6254 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6255
6256       </div>
6257       <div class="tags">
6258
6259
6260         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6261
6262
6263       </div>
6264     </div>
6265     <div class="padding"></div>
6266
6267     <div class="entry">
6268       <div class="title">
6269         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
6270       </div>
6271       <div class="date">
6272         12th May 2016
6273       </div>
6274       <div class="body">
6275         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
6276 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
6277 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
6278 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
6279 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
6280 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6281 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
6282 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
6283 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
6284 great if you could help out with
6285 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
6286 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
6287
6288       </div>
6289       <div class="tags">
6290
6291
6292         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://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="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
6302       </div>
6303       <div class="date">
6304          8th May 2016
6305       </div>
6306       <div class="body">
6307         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
6308 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
6309
6310 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
6311 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
6312 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
6313 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
6314 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
6315 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
6316 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
6317 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
6318 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
6319 players.</p>
6320
6321 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
6322 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
6323 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
6324 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
6325 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
6326 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
6327 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
6328 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
6329 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
6330 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
6331 support most file formats.</p>
6332
6333 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
6334 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
6335 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
6336 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
6337 listed first in the table.</p>
6338
6339 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
6340 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
6341 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
6342 support?</p>
6343
6344       </div>
6345       <div class="tags">
6346
6347
6348         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6349
6350
6351       </div>
6352     </div>
6353     <div class="padding"></div>
6354
6355     <div class="entry">
6356       <div class="title">
6357         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
6358       </div>
6359       <div class="date">
6360          4th May 2016
6361       </div>
6362       <div class="body">
6363         A friend of mine made me aware of
6364 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
6365 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
6366 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
6367
6368 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
6369 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
6370 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
6371 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
6372 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
6373 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
6374 production started.</p>
6375
6376 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
6377 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
6378 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
6379
6380       </div>
6381       <div class="tags">
6382
6383
6384         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6385
6386
6387       </div>
6388     </div>
6389     <div class="padding"></div>
6390
6391     <div class="entry">
6392       <div class="title">
6393         <a href="https://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>
6394       </div>
6395       <div class="date">
6396         10th April 2016
6397       </div>
6398       <div class="body">
6399         <p>During this weekends
6400 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
6401 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
6402 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
6403 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
6404 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
6405 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
6406 contributing using
6407 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
6408 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
6409 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
6410 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
6411 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
6412 contributors</a>.</p>
6413
6414 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
6415 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
6416 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
6417 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
6418 available for many more languages.</p>
6419
6420       </div>
6421       <div class="tags">
6422
6423
6424         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6425
6426
6427       </div>
6428     </div>
6429     <div class="padding"></div>
6430
6431     <div class="entry">
6432       <div class="title">
6433         <a href="https://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>
6434       </div>
6435       <div class="date">
6436          7th April 2016
6437       </div>
6438       <div class="body">
6439         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
6440 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
6441 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
6442 But I might be wrong.</p>
6443
6444 <p>According to
6445 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
6446 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
6447 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
6448 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
6449 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
6450 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
6451 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
6452 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
6453 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
6454 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
6455
6456 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
6457 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
6458 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
6459 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
6460 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
6461 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
6462 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
6463 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6464 team status page</a>, and
6465 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
6466 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
6467
6468 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
6469 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
6470 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
6471 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
6472 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
6473 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
6474 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
6475 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
6476 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
6477 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
6478 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
6479 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
6480
6481       </div>
6482       <div class="tags">
6483
6484
6485         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6486
6487
6488       </div>
6489     </div>
6490     <div class="padding"></div>
6491
6492     <div class="entry">
6493       <div class="title">
6494         <a href="https://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>
6495       </div>
6496       <div class="date">
6497         23rd March 2016
6498       </div>
6499       <div class="body">
6500         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
6501 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
6502 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
6503 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
6504 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
6505 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
6506 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
6507 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
6508
6509 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
6510 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
6511 and lifetime prediction by running:
6512
6513 <p><pre>
6514 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
6515 </pre></p>
6516
6517 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
6518
6519 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
6520 entry yet):</p>
6521
6522 <p><pre>
6523 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
6524 </pre></p>
6525
6526 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
6527 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
6528 few years of data.</p>
6529
6530 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
6531 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
6532 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
6533 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
6534 know.  The issue is reported as
6535 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
6536 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
6537 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
6538 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
6539 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
6540
6541 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
6542 check out the
6543 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
6544 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
6545 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
6546 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
6547 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
6548
6549       </div>
6550       <div class="tags">
6551
6552
6553         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6554
6555
6556       </div>
6557     </div>
6558     <div class="padding"></div>
6559
6560     <div class="entry">
6561       <div class="title">
6562         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
6563       </div>
6564       <div class="date">
6565         15th March 2016
6566       </div>
6567       <div class="body">
6568         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
6569 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
6570 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
6571 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
6572 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
6573 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
6574 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
6575 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
6576 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
6577 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
6578 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
6579
6580 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
6581 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
6582 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
6583 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
6584 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
6585 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
6586 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
6587 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
6588 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
6589 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
6590 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
6591
6592 <p align="center"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
6593
6594 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
6595 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
6596 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
6597 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
6598 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
6599 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
6600
6601 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
6602 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
6603 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
6604 and graphing.</p>
6605
6606 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
6607 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
6608 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
6609 on
6610 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
6611 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
6612
6613       </div>
6614       <div class="tags">
6615
6616
6617         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6618
6619
6620       </div>
6621     </div>
6622     <div class="padding"></div>
6623
6624     <div class="entry">
6625       <div class="title">
6626         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
6627       </div>
6628       <div class="date">
6629         19th February 2016
6630       </div>
6631       <div class="body">
6632         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
6633 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
6634 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
6635 the code in the package in question, preferably in
6636 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
6637 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
6638
6639 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
6640 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
6641 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
6642 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
6643 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
6644 out what was wrong with
6645 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
6646 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
6647 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
6648 semi-automatically.</p>
6649
6650 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
6651 file based on the code in the source package,
6652 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
6653 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
6654 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
6655 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
6656 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
6657 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
6658 option in
6659 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
6660 blog posts from 2014</a>.
6661
6662 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
6663
6664 <p><pre>
6665 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
6666 </pre></p>
6667
6668 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
6669 this might not be the best option.</p>
6670
6671 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
6672 this approach in
6673 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
6674 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
6675 dpkg-copyright' option:
6676
6677 <p><pre>
6678 cme update dpkg-copyright
6679 </pre></p>
6680
6681 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
6682 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
6683
6684 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
6685 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
6686 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
6687 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
6688 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
6689 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
6690 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
6691 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
6692 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
6693 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
6694
6695 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
6696 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
6697 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
6698 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
6699
6700 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
6701 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
6702 planet.debian.org.</p>
6703
6704 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6705 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6706 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6707
6708 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
6709 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
6710
6711 <p><pre>
6712 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
6713   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
6714 </pre></p>
6715
6716 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
6717 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
6718 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
6719 with my packages in the future.</p>
6720
6721 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
6722 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
6723 command line.</p>
6724
6725       </div>
6726       <div class="tags">
6727
6728
6729         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6730
6731
6732       </div>
6733     </div>
6734     <div class="padding"></div>
6735
6736     <div class="entry">
6737       <div class="title">
6738         <a href="https://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>
6739       </div>
6740       <div class="date">
6741          4th February 2016
6742       </div>
6743       <div class="body">
6744         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
6745 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
6746 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
6747 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
6748 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
6749 about. :)</p>
6750
6751 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
6752 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
6753 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
6754 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
6755 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
6756 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
6757
6758 <blockquote><pre>
6759 % apt install appstream
6760 [...]
6761 % apt update
6762 [...]
6763 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
6764   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
6765 firmware-qlogic
6766 %
6767 </pre></blockquote>
6768
6769 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
6770 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
6771 a way appstream can use.</p>
6772
6773 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
6774 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
6775 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
6776 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
6777 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
6778 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
6779
6780 <blockquote><pre>
6781 % apt install appstream
6782 [...]
6783 % apt update
6784 [...]
6785 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
6786   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
6787 bkchem
6788 phototonic
6789 inkscape
6790 shutter
6791 tetzle
6792 geeqie
6793 xia
6794 pinta
6795 gthumb
6796 karbon
6797 comix
6798 mirage
6799 viewnior
6800 postr
6801 ristretto
6802 kolourpaint4
6803 eog
6804 eom
6805 gimagereader
6806 midori
6807 %
6808 </pre></blockquote>
6809
6810 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
6811 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
6812
6813       </div>
6814       <div class="tags">
6815
6816
6817         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6818
6819
6820       </div>
6821     </div>
6822     <div class="padding"></div>
6823
6824     <div class="entry">
6825       <div class="title">
6826         <a href="https://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>
6827       </div>
6828       <div class="date">
6829         24th January 2016
6830       </div>
6831       <div class="body">
6832         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
6833 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
6834 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
6835 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
6836 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
6837 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
6838 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
6839 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
6840 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
6841 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
6842 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
6843 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
6844 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
6845 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
6846 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
6847 entities.</p>
6848
6849 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
6850
6851 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
6852 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
6853 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
6854 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
6855 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
6856 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
6857 tool to do so is called
6858 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
6859 discovered it when I read
6860 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
6861 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
6862 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
6863 The python program was in Debian, but
6864 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
6865 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
6866 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
6867 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
6868 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
6869 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
6870 are now included
6871 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
6872
6873 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
6874 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
6875 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
6876 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
6877 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
6878 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
6879 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
6880 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
6881 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
6882 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
6883 about yourself with the services.</p>
6884
6885 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
6886 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
6887 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
6888 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
6889 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
6890 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
6891 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
6892 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
6893 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
6894 things.  A similar technique have been
6895 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
6896 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
6897 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
6898 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
6899 public.</p>
6900
6901 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
6902 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
6903 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
6904 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
6905
6906 <p>(I have uploaded
6907 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
6908 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
6909 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
6910
6911       </div>
6912       <div class="tags">
6913
6914
6915         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
6916
6917
6918       </div>
6919     </div>
6920     <div class="padding"></div>
6921
6922     <div class="entry">
6923       <div class="title">
6924         <a href="https://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>
6925       </div>
6926       <div class="date">
6927         15th January 2016
6928       </div>
6929       <div class="body">
6930         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
6931 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
6932 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
6933 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
6934 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
6935 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
6936 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
6937 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
6938 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
6939 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
6940 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
6941 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
6942 was not the first to propose this, as the
6943 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
6944 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
6945 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
6946 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
6947
6948 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
6949 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
6950 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
6951 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
6952 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
6953
6954 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
6955 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
6956 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
6957 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
6958 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
6959 done in /etc/.</p>
6960
6961 <blockquote><pre>
6962 apt install apt-transport-tor
6963 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
6964 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
6965 </pre></blockquote>
6966
6967 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
6968 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
6969 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
6970 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
6971
6972 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
6973 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
6974 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
6975 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
6976 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
6977 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
6978
6979 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
6980 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
6981 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
6982 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
6983 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
6984
6985 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
6986 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
6987 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
6988 system.</p>
6989
6990       </div>
6991       <div class="tags">
6992
6993
6994         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6995
6996
6997       </div>
6998     </div>
6999     <div class="padding"></div>
7000
7001     <div class="entry">
7002       <div class="title">
7003         <a href="https://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>
7004       </div>
7005       <div class="date">
7006         23rd December 2015
7007       </div>
7008       <div class="body">
7009         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
7010 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
7011 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
7012 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
7013 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
7014 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
7015
7016 <p>A few days I came across
7017 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
7018 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
7019 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
7020 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
7021 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
7022 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
7023 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
7024 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
7025 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
7026 discovered the developer
7027 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
7028 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
7029 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
7030 archive.</p>
7031
7032 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
7033 it into Debian, where it currently
7034 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
7035 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
7036
7037 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
7038 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
7039 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
7040 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
7041 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
7042 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
7043 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
7044 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
7045 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
7046 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
7047 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
7048 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
7049
7050 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
7051 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
7052 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
7053 package show up in unstable.</p>
7054
7055       </div>
7056       <div class="tags">
7057
7058
7059         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
7060
7061
7062       </div>
7063     </div>
7064     <div class="padding"></div>
7065
7066     <div class="entry">
7067       <div class="title">
7068         <a href="https://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>
7069       </div>
7070       <div class="date">
7071         20th December 2015
7072       </div>
7073       <div class="body">
7074         <p>Around three years ago, I created
7075 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
7076 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
7077 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
7078 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
7079 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
7080 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
7081 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
7082 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
7083 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
7084 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
7085 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
7086 with.</p>
7087
7088 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
7089 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
7090 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
7091 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
7092 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
7093 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
7094 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
7095 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
7096 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
7097 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
7098 Debian version of appstream.</p>
7099
7100 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
7101 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
7102 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
7103 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
7104 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
7105 how do add the required
7106 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
7107 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
7108 this content:</p>
7109
7110 <blockquote><pre>
7111 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
7112 &lt;component&gt;
7113   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
7114   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
7115   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
7116   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
7117   &lt;description&gt;
7118     &lt;p&gt;
7119       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
7120       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
7121       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
7122       launcher.
7123     &lt;/p&gt;
7124   &lt;/description&gt;
7125   &lt;provides&gt;
7126     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
7127   &lt;/provides&gt;
7128 &lt;/component&gt;
7129 </pre></blockquote>
7130
7131 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
7132 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
7133 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
7134 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
7135 0202.</p>
7136
7137 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
7138 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
7139 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
7140 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
7141 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
7142 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
7143 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
7144 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
7145
7146 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
7147 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
7148 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
7149 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
7150 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
7151
7152 <blockquote><pre>
7153 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
7154 </pre></blockquote>
7155
7156 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
7157 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
7158 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
7159 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
7160 question.</p>
7161
7162 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
7163 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
7164
7165 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
7166 try running this command on the command line:</p>
7167
7168 <blockquote><pre>
7169 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
7170 </pre></blockquote>
7171
7172 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
7173 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
7174 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
7175
7176       </div>
7177       <div class="tags">
7178
7179
7180         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7181
7182
7183       </div>
7184     </div>
7185     <div class="padding"></div>
7186
7187     <div class="entry">
7188       <div class="title">
7189         <a href="https://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>
7190       </div>
7191       <div class="date">
7192         30th November 2015
7193       </div>
7194       <div class="body">
7195         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
7196 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
7197 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
7198 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
7199 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
7200
7201 <blockquote>
7202
7203 <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>
7204
7205 <blockquote>
7206 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
7207
7208 The first step is to choose a
7209 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
7210 code.<br/>
7211
7212 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
7213 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
7214
7215 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
7216 work<br/>
7217
7218 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
7219 </blockquote>
7220
7221 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
7222 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
7223 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
7224 0x57</a></small></p>
7225
7226 <p>As the Debian Website
7227 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
7228 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
7229 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
7230 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
7231 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
7232 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
7233 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
7234 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
7235 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
7236 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
7237 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
7238 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
7239 Freedom">FaiF</a>
7240 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
7241 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
7242 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
7243 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
7244 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
7245 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
7246 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
7247 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
7248 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
7249 In March the SFC supported a
7250 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
7251 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
7252 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
7253 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
7254 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
7255 conferences
7256 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
7257 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
7258 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
7259 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
7260 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
7261 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
7262 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
7263 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
7264 Software.</p>
7265
7266 <p>If you support Free Software,
7267 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
7268 what the SFC do, agree with their
7269 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
7270 principles</a>, are happy about their
7271 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
7272 work on a project that is an SFC
7273 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
7274 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
7275 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
7276 Allan Webber</a>,
7277 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
7278 Smith</a>,
7279 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
7280 Bacon</a>, myself and
7281 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
7282 becoming a
7283 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
7284 next week your donation will be
7285 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
7286 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
7287 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
7288 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
7289 social media accounts.</p>
7290
7291 </blockquote>
7292
7293 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
7294 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
7295 supporter too?</p>
7296
7297       </div>
7298       <div class="tags">
7299
7300
7301         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
7302
7303
7304       </div>
7305     </div>
7306     <div class="padding"></div>
7307
7308     <div class="entry">
7309       <div class="title">
7310         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
7311       </div>
7312       <div class="date">
7313         17th November 2015
7314       </div>
7315       <div class="body">
7316         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
7317 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
7318 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
7319 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
7320 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
7321 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
7322 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
7323 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
7324 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
7325 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
7326
7327 <pre>
7328 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
7329       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
7330 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
7331 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
7332 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
7333 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
7334 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
7335 </pre>
7336
7337 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
7338 my old key.</p>
7339
7340 <p>If you signed my old key
7341 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
7342 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
7343 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
7344 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
7345
7346       </div>
7347       <div class="tags">
7348
7349
7350         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7351
7352
7353       </div>
7354     </div>
7355     <div class="padding"></div>
7356
7357     <div class="entry">
7358       <div class="title">
7359         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
7360       </div>
7361       <div class="date">
7362         24th September 2015
7363       </div>
7364       <div class="body">
7365         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
7366 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
7367 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
7368 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
7369 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
7370 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
7371 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
7372
7373 <img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
7374
7375 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
7376 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
7377 by someone else.  I found
7378 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
7379 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
7380 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
7381 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
7382 from him.  Via
7383 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
7384 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
7385 discovered
7386 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
7387 available in Debian.</p>
7388
7389 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
7390 battery stats ever since. Now my
7391 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
7392 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
7393 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
7394 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
7395
7396 <pre>
7397 #!/bin/sh
7398 # Inspired by
7399 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
7400 # See also
7401 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
7402 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
7403
7404 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
7405     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
7406
7407 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
7408     (
7409         printf "timestamp,"
7410         for f in $files; do
7411             printf "%s," $f
7412         done
7413         echo
7414     ) > "$logfile"
7415 fi
7416
7417 log_battery() {
7418     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
7419     # when several log processes run in parallel.
7420     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
7421         for f in $files; do \
7422             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
7423         done)
7424     echo "$msg"
7425 }
7426
7427 cd /sys/class/power_supply
7428
7429 for bat in BAT*; do
7430     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
7431 done
7432 </pre>
7433
7434 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
7435 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
7436 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
7437 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
7438 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
7439 The code for the Debian package
7440 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
7441 available on github</a>.</p>
7442
7443 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
7444
7445 <pre>
7446 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
7447 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
7448 [...]
7449 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
7450 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
7451 </pre>
7452
7453 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
7454 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
7455 battery.</p>
7456
7457 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
7458 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
7459 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
7460 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
7461 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
7462 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
7463 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
7464 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
7465 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
7466 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
7467 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
7468 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
7469 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
7470 Linux too.</p>
7471
7472 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
7473 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
7474 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
7475 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
7476 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
7477 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
7478 load).</p>
7479
7480 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
7481 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
7482 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
7483 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
7484 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
7485 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
7486 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
7487 those.</p>
7488
7489 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
7490 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
7491 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
7492 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
7493 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
7494 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
7495 specific.</p>
7496
7497       </div>
7498       <div class="tags">
7499
7500
7501         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7502
7503
7504       </div>
7505     </div>
7506     <div class="padding"></div>
7507
7508     <div class="entry">
7509       <div class="title">
7510         <a href="https://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>
7511       </div>
7512       <div class="date">
7513          5th July 2015
7514       </div>
7515       <div class="body">
7516         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
7517 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
7518 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
7519 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
7520 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
7521 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
7522 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
7523 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
7524 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
7525 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
7526 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
7527
7528 <p>One tip I got was to use the
7529 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
7530 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
7531 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
7532 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
7533 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
7534 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
7535
7536 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
7537 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
7538 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
7539 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
7540 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
7541 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
7542 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
7543 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
7544 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
7545 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
7546 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
7547 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
7548 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
7549 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
7550 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
7551
7552 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
7553 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
7554 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
7555 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
7556
7557 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
7558 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
7559
7560 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
7561 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
7562 different
7563 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
7564 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
7565
7566       </div>
7567       <div class="tags">
7568
7569
7570         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7571
7572
7573       </div>
7574     </div>
7575     <div class="padding"></div>
7576
7577     <div class="entry">
7578       <div class="title">
7579         <a href="https://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>
7580       </div>
7581       <div class="date">
7582          3rd July 2015
7583       </div>
7584       <div class="body">
7585         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
7586 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
7587 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
7588 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
7589 flickering.</p>
7590
7591 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
7592 still as
7593 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
7594 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
7595 good help from
7596 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
7597 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
7598 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
7599 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
7600 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
7601 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
7602 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
7603 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
7604 deteriorated since X41.</p>
7605
7606 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
7607 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
7608 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
7609 have suggestions.</p>
7610
7611 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
7612 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
7613 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
7614
7615       </div>
7616       <div class="tags">
7617
7618
7619         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7620
7621
7622       </div>
7623     </div>
7624     <div class="padding"></div>
7625
7626     <div class="entry">
7627       <div class="title">
7628         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
7629       </div>
7630       <div class="date">
7631         22nd November 2014
7632       </div>
7633       <div class="body">
7634         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
7635 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
7636 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
7637 courtesy of
7638 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
7639 Schubert</a> and
7640 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
7641 McVittie</a>.
7642
7643 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
7644 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
7645 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
7646 you upgrade:</p>
7647
7648 <p><blockquote><pre>
7649 Package: systemd-sysv
7650 Pin: release o=Debian
7651 Pin-Priority: -1
7652 </pre></blockquote><p>
7653
7654 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
7655 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
7656 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
7657 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
7658 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
7659
7660 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
7661 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
7662 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
7663 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
7664 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
7665 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
7666
7667 <p><blockquote><pre>
7668 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
7669 </pre></blockquote><p>
7670
7671 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
7672
7673 <p><blockquote><pre>
7674 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
7675 </pre></blockquote><p>
7676
7677 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
7678 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
7679
7680 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
7681 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
7682 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
7683 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
7684 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
7685 Jessie is released.</p>
7686
7687 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
7688 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
7689 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
7690 line.</p>
7691
7692       </div>
7693       <div class="tags">
7694
7695
7696         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7697
7698
7699       </div>
7700     </div>
7701     <div class="padding"></div>
7702
7703     <div class="entry">
7704       <div class="title">
7705         <a href="https://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>
7706       </div>
7707       <div class="date">
7708         10th November 2014
7709       </div>
7710       <div class="body">
7711         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
7712 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
7713 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
7714
7715 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
7716 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
7717 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
7718 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
7719 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
7720 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
7721 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
7722 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
7723 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
7724 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
7725 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
7726 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
7727 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
7728 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
7729 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
7730
7731 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
7732 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
7733 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
7734 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
7735 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
7736 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
7737 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
7738 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
7739 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
7740 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
7741 were fairly easy, and
7742 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
7743 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
7744 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
7745 useful approach.</p>
7746
7747 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
7748 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
7749 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
7750 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
7751 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
7752 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
7753 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
7754 this:</p>
7755
7756 <p><blockquote><pre>
7757 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
7758   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
7759 </pre></blockquote></p>
7760
7761 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
7762 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
7763
7764 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
7765 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
7766 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
7767 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
7768 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
7769 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
7770 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
7771 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
7772 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
7773 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
7774 system.</p>
7775
7776 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
7777 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
7778 SMTorP. :)</p>
7779
7780       </div>
7781       <div class="tags">
7782
7783
7784         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7785
7786
7787       </div>
7788     </div>
7789     <div class="padding"></div>
7790
7791     <div class="entry">
7792       <div class="title">
7793         <a href="https://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>
7794       </div>
7795       <div class="date">
7796         22nd October 2014
7797       </div>
7798       <div class="body">
7799         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
7800 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
7801 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
7802 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
7803 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
7804 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
7805 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
7806 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
7807 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
7808 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
7809 lists I recently took over:</p>
7810
7811 <p><blockquote><pre>
7812 % time listadmin xiph
7813 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
7814 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
7815
7816 real    0m1.709s
7817 user    0m0.232s
7818 sys     0m0.012s
7819 %
7820 </pre></blockquote></p>
7821
7822 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
7823 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
7824 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
7825 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
7826 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
7827 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
7828 program.</p>
7829
7830 <p>If you install
7831 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
7832 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
7833 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
7834
7835 <p><blockquote><pre>
7836 username username@example.org
7837 spamlevel 23
7838 default discard
7839 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
7840
7841 password secret
7842 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
7843 mailman-list@lists.example.com
7844
7845 password hidden
7846 other-list@otherserver.example.org
7847 </pre></blockquote></p>
7848
7849 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
7850 learn the details.</p>
7851
7852 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
7853 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
7854 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
7855 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
7856
7857 <p><blockquote><pre>
7858 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
7859 </pre></blockquote></p>
7860
7861 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
7862 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
7863 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
7864 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
7865 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
7866 email.</p>
7867
7868 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
7869 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
7870 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
7871 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
7872 software.</p>
7873
7874 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7875 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7876 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7877
7878 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
7879 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
7880 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
7881 sure why.</p>
7882
7883       </div>
7884       <div class="tags">
7885
7886
7887         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
7888
7889
7890       </div>
7891     </div>
7892     <div class="padding"></div>
7893
7894     <div class="entry">
7895       <div class="title">
7896         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
7897       </div>
7898       <div class="date">
7899         17th October 2014
7900       </div>
7901       <div class="body">
7902         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
7903 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
7904 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
7905 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
7906 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
7907 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
7908 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
7909
7910 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
7911 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
7912 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
7913 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
7914 of this story.)</p>
7915
7916 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
7917 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
7918 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
7919 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
7920 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
7921 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
7922 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
7923 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
7924 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
7925 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
7926
7927 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
7928 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
7929 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
7930 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
7931
7932 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
7933 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
7934
7935 <p><blockquote><pre>
7936 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
7937 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
7938 </pre></blockquote></p>
7939
7940 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
7941 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
7942 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
7943 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
7944 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
7945 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
7946 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
7947 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
7948
7949 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
7950 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
7951
7952 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
7953 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
7954 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
7955 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
7956 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
7957
7958 <p><blockquote><pre>
7959 Task: isenkram-packages
7960 Section: hardware
7961 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
7962  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
7963  proposed.
7964 Test-new-install: show show
7965 Relevance: 8
7966 Packages: for-current-hardware
7967
7968 Task: isenkram-firmware
7969 Section: hardware
7970 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
7971  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
7972  packages are proposed.
7973 Test-new-install: mark show
7974 Relevance: 8
7975 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
7976 </pre></blockquote></p>
7977
7978 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
7979 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
7980 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
7981 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
7982 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
7983
7984 <p><blockquote><pre>
7985 #!/bin/sh
7986 #
7987 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
7988 export PATH
7989 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
7990 </pre></blockquote></p>
7991
7992 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
7993 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
7994
7995 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
7996 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
7997 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
7998 install.</p>
7999
8000 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
8001 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
8002 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
8003
8004       </div>
8005       <div class="tags">
8006
8007
8008         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
8009
8010
8011       </div>
8012     </div>
8013     <div class="padding"></div>
8014
8015     <div class="entry">
8016       <div class="title">
8017         <a href="https://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>
8018       </div>
8019       <div class="date">
8020          4th October 2014
8021       </div>
8022       <div class="body">
8023         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
8024 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
8025 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
8026 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
8027
8028 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
8029
8030 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
8031 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
8032 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
8033
8034       </div>
8035       <div class="tags">
8036
8037
8038         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8039
8040
8041       </div>
8042     </div>
8043     <div class="padding"></div>
8044
8045     <div class="entry">
8046       <div class="title">
8047         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
8048       </div>
8049       <div class="date">
8050          4th October 2014
8051       </div>
8052       <div class="body">
8053         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
8054 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
8055 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
8056 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
8057 Dibb.</p>
8058
8059 <p>I just wrapped up
8060 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
8061 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
8062 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
8063 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
8064 0.17.</p>
8065
8066 <ul>
8067
8068  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
8069  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
8070    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
8071  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
8072  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
8073  <li>Fix include orders</li>
8074  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
8075  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
8076  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
8077    the palette size is the same.</li>
8078  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
8079  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
8080  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
8081  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
8082    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
8083
8084 </ul>
8085
8086 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
8087 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
8088 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
8089
8090       </div>
8091       <div class="tags">
8092
8093
8094         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8095
8096
8097       </div>
8098     </div>
8099     <div class="padding"></div>
8100
8101     <div class="entry">
8102       <div class="title">
8103         <a href="https://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>
8104       </div>
8105       <div class="date">
8106         26th September 2014
8107       </div>
8108       <div class="body">
8109         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8110 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
8111 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
8112 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
8113 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
8114 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
8115 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
8116 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
8117 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
8118 future.  The
8119 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
8120 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
8121 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
8122 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
8123 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
8124
8125 <p>First, download the test ISO via
8126 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
8127 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
8128 or rsync (use
8129 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
8130 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
8131 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
8132 install with some tweaking.</p>
8133
8134 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
8135 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
8136
8137 <p><blockquote><pre>
8138 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
8139 </pre></blockquote></p>
8140
8141 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
8142 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
8143 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
8144 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
8145
8146 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
8147 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
8148 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
8149 your need.</p>
8150
8151 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
8152 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
8153 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
8154 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
8155 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
8156 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
8157 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
8158 days.</p>
8159
8160 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
8161 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
8162 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
8163 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
8164 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
8165 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
8166 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
8167 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
8168 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
8169
8170 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
8171 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
8172 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
8173
8174       </div>
8175       <div class="tags">
8176
8177
8178         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8179
8180
8181       </div>
8182     </div>
8183     <div class="padding"></div>
8184
8185     <div class="entry">
8186       <div class="title">
8187         <a href="https://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>
8188       </div>
8189       <div class="date">
8190         25th September 2014
8191       </div>
8192       <div class="body">
8193         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
8194 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
8195 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
8196 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
8197 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
8198 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
8199 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
8200 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
8201 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
8202 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
8203 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
8204 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
8205 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
8206
8207 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
8208 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
8209 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
8210 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
8211 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
8212 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
8213 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
8214 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
8215 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
8216 list</a>. :)</p>
8217
8218       </div>
8219       <div class="tags">
8220
8221
8222         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8223
8224
8225       </div>
8226     </div>
8227     <div class="padding"></div>
8228
8229     <div class="entry">
8230       <div class="title">
8231         <a href="https://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>
8232       </div>
8233       <div class="date">
8234         16th September 2014
8235       </div>
8236       <div class="body">
8237         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
8238 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
8239 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
8240 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
8241 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
8242 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
8243 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
8244 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
8245 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
8246 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
8247 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
8248 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
8249 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
8250 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
8251
8252 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
8253 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
8254 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
8255 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
8256 depend on the small and clever package
8257 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
8258 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
8259 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
8260 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
8261 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
8262 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
8263 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
8264 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
8265 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
8266 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
8267 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
8268
8269 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
8270 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
8271 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
8272 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
8273 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
8274 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
8275 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
8276 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
8277 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
8278 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
8279 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
8280 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
8281 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
8282 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
8283 dialog.</p>
8284
8285 <p><table>
8286
8287 <tr>
8288 <th>Machine/setup</th>
8289 <th>Original tasksel</th>
8290 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
8291 <th>Reduction</th>
8292 </tr>
8293
8294 <tr>
8295 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
8296 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
8297 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
8298 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
8299 </tr>
8300
8301 <tr>
8302 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
8303 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
8304 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
8305 <td>23 min 40%</td>
8306 </tr>
8307
8308 <tr>
8309 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
8310 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
8311 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
8312 <td>11 min 50%</td>
8313 </tr>
8314
8315 <tr>
8316 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
8317 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
8318 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
8319 <td>2 min 33%</td>
8320 </tr>
8321
8322 <tr>
8323 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
8324 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
8325 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
8326 <td>4 min 21%</td>
8327 </tr>
8328
8329 </table></p>
8330
8331 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
8332 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
8333 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
8334 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
8335 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
8336 installed.</p>
8337
8338 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
8339 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
8340 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
8341 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
8342 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
8343 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
8344 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
8345 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
8346 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
8347 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
8348 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
8349 for the entire installation.</p>
8350
8351 <p>I've implemented this in the
8352 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
8353 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
8354 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
8355 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
8356 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
8357
8358 <p><blockquote><pre>
8359 #!/bin/sh
8360 set -e
8361 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
8362 info() {
8363     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
8364 }
8365 error() {
8366     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
8367 }
8368 override_install() {
8369     apt-install eatmydata || true
8370     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
8371         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
8372             file=/usr/bin/$bin
8373             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
8374             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
8375                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
8376                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
8377                     > /target$file.edu
8378                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
8379                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
8380                     --rename --quiet --add $file
8381                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
8382             else
8383                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
8384             fi
8385         done
8386     else
8387         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
8388     fi
8389 }
8390
8391 override_install
8392 </pre></blockquote></p>
8393
8394 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
8395 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
8396
8397 <p><blockquote><pre>
8398 #! /bin/sh -e
8399 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
8400 error() {
8401     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
8402 }
8403 remove_install_override() {
8404     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
8405         file=/usr/bin/$bin
8406         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
8407             rm /target$file
8408             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
8409                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
8410             rm /target$file.edu
8411         else
8412             error "Missing divert for $file."
8413         fi
8414     done
8415     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
8416 }
8417
8418 remove_install_override
8419 </pre></blockquote></p>
8420
8421 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
8422 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
8423 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
8424
8425 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
8426 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
8427 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
8428 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
8429 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
8430 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
8431 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
8432 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
8433 everyone.</p>
8434
8435 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
8436 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
8437 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
8438 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
8439
8440 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
8441 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
8442 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
8443 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
8444 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
8445
8446 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
8447 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
8448 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
8449 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
8450 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
8451
8452       </div>
8453       <div class="tags">
8454
8455
8456         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8457
8458
8459       </div>
8460     </div>
8461     <div class="padding"></div>
8462
8463     <div class="entry">
8464       <div class="title">
8465         <a href="https://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>
8466       </div>
8467       <div class="date">
8468         10th September 2014
8469       </div>
8470       <div class="body">
8471         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
8472 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
8473 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
8474 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
8475 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
8476 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
8477 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
8478 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
8479 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
8480 those problems are gone now.</p>
8481
8482 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
8483 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
8484 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
8485 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
8486 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
8487
8488 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
8489 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
8490 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
8491
8492 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
8493 line:</p>
8494
8495 <p><blockquote><pre>
8496 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
8497 </pre></blockquote></p>
8498
8499 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
8500 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
8501 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
8502 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
8503
8504 <p><blockquote><pre>
8505 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
8506 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
8507 %
8508 </pre></blockquote></p>
8509
8510 <p>Now if only
8511 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
8512 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
8513 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
8514 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
8515 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
8516 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
8517 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
8518 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
8519 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
8520
8521       </div>
8522       <div class="tags">
8523
8524
8525         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8526
8527
8528       </div>
8529     </div>
8530     <div class="padding"></div>
8531
8532     <div class="entry">
8533       <div class="title">
8534         <a href="https://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>
8535       </div>
8536       <div class="date">
8537         17th June 2014
8538       </div>
8539       <div class="body">
8540         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8541 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
8542 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
8543 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
8544 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
8545
8546 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
8547 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
8548 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
8549 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
8550 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
8551 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
8552 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
8553 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
8554 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
8555 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
8556 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
8557 goals.</p>
8558
8559 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
8560 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
8561 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
8562 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
8563 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
8564 chapters together into one large web page (aka
8565 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
8566 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
8567 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
8568 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
8569 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
8570 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
8571 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
8572 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
8573 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
8574 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
8575 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
8576 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
8577 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
8578 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
8579 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
8580 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
8581 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
8582 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
8583
8584 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
8585 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
8586 track the English original.  For this we use the
8587 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
8588 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
8589 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
8590 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
8591 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
8592 files), which the translations update with the native language
8593 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
8594 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
8595 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
8596 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
8597 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
8598 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
8599 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
8600 of the documentation.</p>
8601
8602 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
8603 recommend using
8604 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
8605 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
8606 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
8607 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
8608 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
8609 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
8610 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
8611 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
8612
8613 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
8614 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
8615 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
8616 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
8617 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
8618 translated images by storing translated versions in
8619 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
8620 package maintainers know more.</p>
8621
8622 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
8623 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
8624 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
8625 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
8626 PDF version</a> or the
8627 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
8628 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
8629 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
8630
8631 <p>To learn more, check out
8632 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
8633 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
8634 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
8635 manual on the wiki</a> and
8636 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
8637 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
8638
8639       </div>
8640       <div class="tags">
8641
8642
8643         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8644
8645
8646       </div>
8647     </div>
8648     <div class="padding"></div>
8649
8650     <div class="entry">
8651       <div class="title">
8652         <a href="https://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>
8653       </div>
8654       <div class="date">
8655         23rd April 2014
8656       </div>
8657       <div class="body">
8658         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
8659 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
8660 So I implemented one, using
8661 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
8662 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
8663 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
8664 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
8665 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
8666 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
8667
8668 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
8669 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
8670 packages to install.  The first part is in
8671 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
8672 this:</p>
8673
8674 <p><blockquote><pre>
8675 Task: isenkram
8676 Section: hardware
8677 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8678  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
8679  proposed.
8680 Test-new-install: mark show
8681 Relevance: 8
8682 Packages: for-current-hardware
8683 </pre></blockquote></p>
8684
8685 <p>The second part is in
8686 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
8687 this:</p>
8688
8689 <p><blockquote><pre>
8690 #!/bin/sh
8691 #
8692 (
8693     isenkram-lookup
8694     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
8695 ) | sort -u
8696 </pre></blockquote></p>
8697
8698 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
8699 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
8700 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
8701 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
8702 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
8703 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
8704
8705 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
8706 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
8707 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
8708 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
8709 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
8710 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
8711 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
8712 the python-apt code (bug
8713 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
8714 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
8715 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
8716 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
8717 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
8718 unstable today.</p>
8719
8720 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
8721 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
8722 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
8723 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
8724 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
8725 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
8726 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
8727 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
8728 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
8729
8730 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
8731 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
8732 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
8733 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
8734 package.  See also
8735 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
8736 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
8737 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
8738 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
8739
8740       </div>
8741       <div class="tags">
8742
8743
8744         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8745
8746
8747       </div>
8748     </div>
8749     <div class="padding"></div>
8750
8751     <div class="entry">
8752       <div class="title">
8753         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
8754       </div>
8755       <div class="date">
8756         15th April 2014
8757       </div>
8758       <div class="body">
8759         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
8760 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
8761 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
8762 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
8763 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
8764 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
8765
8766 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
8767 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
8768 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
8769 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
8770 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
8771 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
8772 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
8773
8774 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
8775 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
8776 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
8777 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
8778 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
8779 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
8780 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
8781 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
8782 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
8783 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
8784 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
8785 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
8786
8787 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
8788 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
8789 become root:</p>
8790
8791 <p><pre>
8792 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
8793   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
8794   u-boot-tools
8795 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
8796   freedom-maker
8797 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
8798 </pre></p>
8799
8800 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
8801 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
8802 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
8803 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
8804 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
8805 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
8806 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
8807 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
8808
8809 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
8810 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
8811 the preseed values:</p>
8812
8813 <p><pre>
8814 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
8815 </pre></p>
8816
8817 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
8818 it still work.</p>
8819
8820 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
8821 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
8822 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
8823 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
8824 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
8825 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
8826 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
8827
8828 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
8829 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
8830 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
8831 irc.debian.org)</a> and
8832 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
8833 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
8834
8835       </div>
8836       <div class="tags">
8837
8838
8839         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8840
8841
8842       </div>
8843     </div>
8844     <div class="padding"></div>
8845
8846     <div class="entry">
8847       <div class="title">
8848         <a href="https://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>
8849       </div>
8850       <div class="date">
8851          9th April 2014
8852       </div>
8853       <div class="body">
8854         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
8855 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
8856 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
8857 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
8858 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
8859 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
8860 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
8861 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
8862 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
8863 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
8864 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
8865 have looked at a system called
8866 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
8867 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
8868
8869 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
8870 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
8871 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
8872 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
8873 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
8874 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
8875 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
8876 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
8877 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
8878 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
8879 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
8880 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
8881 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
8882
8883 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
8884 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
8885 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
8886 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
8887 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
8888 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
8889 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
8890 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
8891 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
8892 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
8893 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
8894 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
8895 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
8896 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
8897 account.</p>
8898
8899 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
8900 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
8901 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
8902 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
8903 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
8904 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
8905 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
8906
8907 <p><blockquote><pre>
8908 [s3c]
8909 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
8910 backend-login: API-login
8911 backend-password: API-password
8912 fs-passphrase: local-password
8913 </pre></blockquote></p>
8914
8915 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
8916 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
8917 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
8918 details and password to create it:</p>
8919
8920 <p><blockquote><pre>
8921 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
8922 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
8923   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
8924 Enter backend login:
8925 Enter backend password:
8926 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
8927 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
8928 Enter encryption password:
8929 Confirm encryption password:
8930 Generating random encryption key...
8931 Creating metadata tables...
8932 Dumping metadata...
8933 ..objects..
8934 ..blocks..
8935 ..inodes..
8936 ..inode_blocks..
8937 ..symlink_targets..
8938 ..names..
8939 ..contents..
8940 ..ext_attributes..
8941 Compressing and uploading metadata...
8942 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
8943 # </pre></blockquote></p>
8944
8945 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
8946
8947 <p><blockquote><pre>
8948 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
8949   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
8950 Using 4 upload threads.
8951 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
8952 Reading metadata...
8953 ..objects..
8954 ..blocks..
8955 ..inodes..
8956 ..inode_blocks..
8957 ..symlink_targets..
8958 ..names..
8959 ..contents..
8960 ..ext_attributes..
8961 Mounting filesystem...
8962 # df -h /s3ql
8963 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
8964 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
8965 #
8966 </pre></blockquote></p>
8967
8968 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
8969 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
8970 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
8971 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
8972 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
8973 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
8974
8975 <p><blockquote><pre>
8976 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
8977 #
8978 </pre></blockquote></p>
8979
8980 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
8981 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
8982 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
8983 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
8984 file system:</p>
8985
8986 <p><blockquote><pre>
8987 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
8988 Using cached metadata.
8989 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
8990 Checking DB integrity...
8991 Creating temporary extra indices...
8992 Checking lost+found...
8993 Checking cached objects...
8994 Checking names (refcounts)...
8995 Checking contents (names)...
8996 Checking contents (inodes)...
8997 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
8998 Checking objects (reference counts)...
8999 Checking objects (backend)...
9000 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
9001 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
9002 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
9003 Checking objects (sizes)...
9004 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
9005 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
9006 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
9007 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
9008 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
9009 Checking inodes (sizes)...
9010 Checking extended attributes (names)...
9011 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
9012 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
9013 Checking directory reachability...
9014 Checking unix conventions...
9015 Checking referential integrity...
9016 Dropping temporary indices...
9017 Backing up old metadata...
9018 Dumping metadata...
9019 ..objects..
9020 ..blocks..
9021 ..inodes..
9022 ..inode_blocks..
9023 ..symlink_targets..
9024 ..names..
9025 ..contents..
9026 ..ext_attributes..
9027 Compressing and uploading metadata...
9028 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
9029 #
9030 </pre></blockquote></p>
9031
9032 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
9033 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
9034 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
9035 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
9036 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
9037 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
9038 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
9039 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
9040 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
9041 working set.</p>
9042
9043 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
9044 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
9045 busy:</p>
9046
9047 <p><blockquote><pre>
9048 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9049   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
9050 Using 8 upload threads.
9051 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
9052 #
9053 </pre></blockquote></p>
9054
9055 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
9056 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
9057 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
9058 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
9059 s3qlctrl:
9060
9061 <p><blockquote><pre>
9062 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
9063 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
9064 #
9065 </pre></blockquote></p>
9066
9067 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
9068 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
9069 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
9070 a report:</p>
9071
9072 <p><blockquote><pre>
9073 # s3qlstat /s3ql
9074 Directory entries:    9141
9075 Inodes:               9143
9076 Data blocks:          8851
9077 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
9078 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
9079 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
9080 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
9081 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
9082 #
9083 </pre></blockquote></p>
9084
9085 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
9086 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
9087 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
9088 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
9089 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
9090 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
9091 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
9092 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
9093 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
9094 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
9095 best.</p>
9096
9097 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
9098 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
9099 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
9100 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
9101 poster is titled
9102 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
9103 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
9104 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
9105 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
9106 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
9107
9108 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
9109 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
9110 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
9111 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
9112 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
9113 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
9114 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
9115 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
9116
9117 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
9118 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
9119 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
9120 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
9121 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
9122 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
9123 only read from it.</p>
9124
9125 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9126 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9127 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9128
9129       </div>
9130       <div class="tags">
9131
9132
9133         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9134
9135
9136       </div>
9137     </div>
9138     <div class="padding"></div>
9139
9140     <div class="entry">
9141       <div class="title">
9142         <a href="https://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>
9143       </div>
9144       <div class="date">
9145         14th March 2014
9146       </div>
9147       <div class="body">
9148         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
9149 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
9150 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
9151 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
9152 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
9153 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
9154 release (0.2).</p>
9155
9156 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
9157 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
9158 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
9159 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
9160 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
9161 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
9162 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
9163 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
9164 and build using
9165 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
9166 with a user with sudo access to become root:
9167
9168 <pre>
9169 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
9170   freedom-maker
9171 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
9172   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
9173   u-boot-tools
9174 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
9175 </pre>
9176
9177 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
9178 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
9179 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
9180 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
9181 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
9182 kpartx call.</p>
9183
9184 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
9185 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
9186 the preseed values:</p>
9187
9188 <pre>
9189 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
9190 </pre>
9191
9192 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
9193 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
9194 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
9195 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
9196 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
9197 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
9198
9199 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
9200 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
9201 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
9202 irc.debian.org)</a> and
9203 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
9204 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
9205
9206       </div>
9207       <div class="tags">
9208
9209
9210         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9211
9212
9213       </div>
9214     </div>
9215     <div class="padding"></div>
9216
9217     <div class="entry">
9218       <div class="title">
9219         <a href="https://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>
9220       </div>
9221       <div class="date">
9222         22nd February 2014
9223       </div>
9224       <div class="body">
9225         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
9226 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
9227 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
9228 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
9229 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
9230 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
9231 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
9232 proper home since then.</p>
9233
9234 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
9235 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
9236 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
9237 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
9238 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
9239
9240 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
9241 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
9242 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
9243 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
9244 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
9245 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
9246 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
9247 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
9248 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
9249
9250       </div>
9251       <div class="tags">
9252
9253
9254         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9255
9256
9257       </div>
9258     </div>
9259     <div class="padding"></div>
9260
9261     <div class="entry">
9262       <div class="title">
9263         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
9264       </div>
9265       <div class="date">
9266          3rd February 2014
9267       </div>
9268       <div class="body">
9269         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
9270 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
9271 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
9272 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
9273 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
9274 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
9275 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
9276 <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>,
9277 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
9278
9279 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
9280 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
9281 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
9282 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
9283 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
9284 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
9285
9286 <p><blockquote><pre>
9287 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
9288 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
9289 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
9290 dhclient /dev/eth0
9291 </pre></blockquote></p>
9292
9293 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
9294 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
9295 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
9296
9297 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
9298 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
9299 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
9300 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
9301 side.</p>
9302
9303 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
9304 stuff:</p>
9305
9306 <p><blockquote><pre>
9307 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
9308 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
9309 EOF
9310 apt-get update
9311 apt-get dist-upgrade
9312 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
9313     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
9314 update-alternatives --config runsystem
9315 </pre></blockquote></p>
9316
9317 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
9318 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
9319 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
9320 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
9321 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
9322 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
9323 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
9324 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
9325 ssh instead.
9326
9327 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
9328 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
9329 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
9330 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
9331 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
9332 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
9333
9334 <p><blockquote><pre>
9335 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
9336 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
9337 EOF
9338 </pre></blockquote></p>
9339
9340 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
9341 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
9342 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
9343 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
9344
9345 <p><blockquote><pre>
9346 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
9347 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
9348 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
9349 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
9350 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
9351 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
9352 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
9353 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
9354 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
9355 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
9356 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
9357 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
9358 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
9359 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
9360 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
9361 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
9362 #
9363 </pre></blockquote></p>
9364
9365 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
9366 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
9367 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
9368 command line stuff.<p>
9369
9370       </div>
9371       <div class="tags">
9372
9373
9374         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9375
9376
9377       </div>
9378     </div>
9379     <div class="padding"></div>
9380
9381     <div class="entry">
9382       <div class="title">
9383         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
9384       </div>
9385       <div class="date">
9386         14th January 2014
9387       </div>
9388       <div class="body">
9389         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
9390 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
9391 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
9392 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
9393 the source.  The company behind it provide
9394 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
9395 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
9396 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
9397 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
9398 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
9399 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
9400 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
9401 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
9402 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
9403 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
9404 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
9405 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
9406 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
9407 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
9408 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
9409 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
9410 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
9411 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
9412 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
9413
9414 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
9415
9416 <ul>
9417
9418   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
9419   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
9420   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
9421
9422 </ul>
9423
9424 <p>You can
9425 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
9426 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
9427 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
9428 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
9429 include a test suite check.</p>
9430
9431       </div>
9432       <div class="tags">
9433
9434
9435         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9436
9437
9438       </div>
9439     </div>
9440     <div class="padding"></div>
9441
9442     <div class="entry">
9443       <div class="title">
9444         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
9445       </div>
9446       <div class="date">
9447         24th November 2013
9448       </div>
9449       <div class="body">
9450         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
9451 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
9452 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
9453 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
9454 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
9455 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
9456 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
9457 is working on.  I checked the
9458 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
9459 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
9460 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
9461 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
9462 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
9463 These are the release notes:</p>
9464
9465 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
9466
9467 <ul>
9468
9469   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
9470    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
9471    up.</li>
9472
9473   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
9474
9475   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
9476    Matthias Klose.</li>
9477
9478   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
9479    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
9480
9481   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
9482    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
9483    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
9484
9485 </ul>
9486
9487 <p>You can
9488 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
9489 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
9490 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
9491 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
9492 include a testsuite check.</p>
9493
9494       </div>
9495       <div class="tags">
9496
9497
9498         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9499
9500
9501       </div>
9502     </div>
9503     <div class="padding"></div>
9504
9505     <div class="entry">
9506       <div class="title">
9507         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
9508       </div>
9509       <div class="date">
9510          2nd November 2013
9511       </div>
9512       <div class="body">
9513         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
9514 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
9515 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
9516 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
9517 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
9518
9519 <p><pre>
9520 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
9521 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
9522 # Provides:          rsyslog
9523 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
9524 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
9525 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
9526 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
9527 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
9528 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
9529 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
9530 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
9531 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
9532 ### END INIT INFO
9533 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
9534 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
9535 </pre></p>
9536
9537 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
9538 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
9539 info/comments.</p>
9540
9541 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
9542 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
9543
9544 <p><pre>
9545 #!/bin/sh
9546
9547 # Define LSB log_* functions.
9548 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
9549 # and status_of_proc is working.
9550 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
9551
9552 #
9553 # Function that starts the daemon/service
9554
9555 #
9556 do_start()
9557 {
9558         # Return
9559         #   0 if daemon has been started
9560         #   1 if daemon was already running
9561         #   2 if daemon could not be started
9562         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
9563                 || return 1
9564         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
9565                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
9566                 || return 2
9567         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
9568         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
9569         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
9570 }
9571
9572 #
9573 # Function that stops the daemon/service
9574 #
9575 do_stop()
9576 {
9577         # Return
9578         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
9579         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
9580         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
9581         #   other if a failure occurred
9582         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
9583         RETVAL="$?"
9584         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
9585         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
9586         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
9587         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
9588         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
9589         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
9590         # sleep for some time.
9591         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
9592         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
9593         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
9594         rm -f $PIDFILE
9595         return "$RETVAL"
9596 }
9597
9598 #
9599 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
9600 #
9601 do_reload() {
9602         #
9603         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
9604         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
9605         # then implement that here.
9606         #
9607         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
9608         return 0
9609 }
9610
9611 SCRIPTNAME=$1
9612 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
9613 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
9614 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
9615     script="$1"
9616     shift
9617     . $script
9618 else
9619     exit 0
9620 fi
9621
9622 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
9623 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
9624
9625 # Exit if the package is not installed
9626 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
9627
9628 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
9629 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
9630
9631 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
9632 . /lib/init/vars.sh
9633
9634 case "$1" in
9635   start)
9636         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
9637         do_start
9638         case "$?" in
9639                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
9640                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
9641         esac
9642         ;;
9643   stop)
9644         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
9645         do_stop
9646         case "$?" in
9647                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
9648                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
9649         esac
9650         ;;
9651   status)
9652         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
9653         ;;
9654   #reload|force-reload)
9655         #
9656         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
9657         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
9658         #
9659         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
9660         #do_reload
9661         #log_end_msg $?
9662         #;;
9663   restart|force-reload)
9664         #
9665         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
9666         # 'force-reload' alias
9667         #
9668         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
9669         do_stop
9670         case "$?" in
9671           0|1)
9672                 do_start
9673                 case "$?" in
9674                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
9675                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
9676                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
9677                 esac
9678                 ;;
9679           *)
9680                 # Failed to stop
9681                 log_end_msg 1
9682                 ;;
9683         esac
9684         ;;
9685   *)
9686         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
9687         exit 3
9688         ;;
9689 esac
9690
9691 :
9692 </pre></p>
9693
9694 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
9695 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
9696 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
9697 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
9698
9699 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
9700 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
9701 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
9702 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
9703 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
9704
9705       </div>
9706       <div class="tags">
9707
9708
9709         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9710
9711
9712       </div>
9713     </div>
9714     <div class="padding"></div>
9715
9716     <div class="entry">
9717       <div class="title">
9718         <a href="https://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>
9719       </div>
9720       <div class="date">
9721          1st November 2013
9722       </div>
9723       <div class="body">
9724         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
9725 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
9726 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
9727 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
9728 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
9729 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
9730 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
9731 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
9732 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
9733 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
9734 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
9735 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
9736
9737 <p>The source is now available from
9738 <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>
9739
9740       </div>
9741       <div class="tags">
9742
9743
9744         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9745
9746
9747       </div>
9748     </div>
9749     <div class="padding"></div>
9750
9751     <div class="entry">
9752       <div class="title">
9753         <a href="https://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>
9754       </div>
9755       <div class="date">
9756         27th October 2013
9757       </div>
9758       <div class="body">
9759         <p>The
9760 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
9761 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
9762 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
9763 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
9764 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
9765 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
9766 of a plan to simplify the build system for
9767 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
9768 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
9769 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
9770 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
9771 Raspberry Pi.</p>
9772
9773 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
9774 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
9775 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
9776 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
9777 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
9778 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
9779 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
9780 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
9781 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
9782 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
9783 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
9784 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
9785 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
9786 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
9787 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
9788 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
9789 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
9790 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
9791 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
9792 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
9793 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
9794 available from
9795 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
9796 upstream project page</a>.</p>
9797
9798 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
9799 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
9800 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
9801 list:</p>
9802
9803 <p><pre>
9804 #!/bin/sh
9805 set -e # Exit on first error
9806 rootdir="$1"
9807 cd "$rootdir"
9808 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
9809 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
9810 EOF
9811 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
9812 # install a kernel somewhere too.
9813 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
9814     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
9815 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
9816 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
9817 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
9818 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
9819 </pre></p>
9820
9821 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
9822 to build the image:</p>
9823
9824 <pre>
9825 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
9826     --variant minbase \
9827     --arch armel \
9828     --distribution jessie \
9829     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
9830     --image test.img \
9831     --size 600M \
9832     --bootsize 64M \
9833     --boottype vfat \
9834     --log-level debug \
9835     --verbose \
9836     --no-kernel \
9837     --no-extlinux \
9838     --root-password raspberry \
9839     --hostname raspberrypi \
9840     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
9841     --customize `pwd`/customize \
9842     --package netbase \
9843     --package git-core \
9844     --package binutils \
9845     --package ca-certificates \
9846     --package wget \
9847     --package kmod
9848 </pre></p>
9849
9850 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
9851 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
9852 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
9853 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
9854 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
9855 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
9856 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
9857
9858 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
9859 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
9860 build dependency list.</p>
9861
9862 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
9863 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
9864 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
9865 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
9866
9867       </div>
9868       <div class="tags">
9869
9870
9871         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
9872
9873
9874       </div>
9875     </div>
9876     <div class="padding"></div>
9877
9878     <div class="entry">
9879       <div class="title">
9880         <a href="https://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>
9881       </div>
9882       <div class="date">
9883         15th October 2013
9884       </div>
9885       <div class="body">
9886         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
9887 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
9888 these. :)</p>
9889
9890 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
9891 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
9892 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
9893 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
9894 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
9895 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
9896 hope you will to. :)</p>
9897
9898 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
9899 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
9900 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
9901 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
9902 donated.  Are you next?</p>
9903
9904 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
9905 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
9906 statement under the heading
9907 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
9908 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
9909 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
9910 too.</p>
9911
9912       </div>
9913       <div class="tags">
9914
9915
9916         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9917
9918
9919       </div>
9920     </div>
9921     <div class="padding"></div>
9922
9923     <div class="entry">
9924       <div class="title">
9925         <a href="https://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>
9926       </div>
9927       <div class="date">
9928         27th September 2013
9929       </div>
9930       <div class="body">
9931         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
9932 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
9933 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
9934 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
9935
9936 <ul>
9937
9938 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
9939 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
9940
9941 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
9942 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
9943
9944 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
9945 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
9946 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
9947 (Youtube)</li>
9948
9949 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
9950 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
9951
9952 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
9953 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
9954
9955 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
9956 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
9957 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
9958
9959 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
9960 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
9961 (Youtube)</li>
9962
9963 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
9964 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
9965
9966 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
9967 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
9968
9969 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
9970 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
9971 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
9972
9973 </ul>
9974
9975 <p>A larger list is available from
9976 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
9977 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
9978
9979 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
9980 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
9981 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
9982 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
9983 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
9984 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
9985 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
9986 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
9987 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
9988 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
9989 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
9990
9991       </div>
9992       <div class="tags">
9993
9994
9995         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9996
9997
9998       </div>
9999     </div>
10000     <div class="padding"></div>
10001
10002     <div class="entry">
10003       <div class="title">
10004         <a href="https://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>
10005       </div>
10006       <div class="date">
10007         10th September 2013
10008       </div>
10009       <div class="body">
10010         <p>I was introduced to the
10011 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
10012 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
10013 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
10014 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
10015 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
10016 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
10017 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
10018 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
10019
10020 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
10021 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
10022 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
10023 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
10024 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
10025
10026 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
10027 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
10028 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
10029 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
10030 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
10031 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
10032 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
10033 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
10034 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
10035 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
10036 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
10037 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
10038 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
10039 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
10040 missing in Debian).</p>
10041
10042 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
10043 scripts
10044 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
10045 and a administrative web interface
10046 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
10047 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
10048 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
10049 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
10050 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
10051 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
10052 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
10053 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
10054 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
10055 this is really working yet, see
10056 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
10057 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
10058 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
10059 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
10060 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
10061 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
10062 with lots of half baked features.</p>
10063
10064 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
10065 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
10066 at.</p>
10067
10068 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
10069
10070 <ol>
10071
10072 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
10073 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
10074 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
10075 to the Debian installer:<p>
10076 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
10077
10078 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
10079 install on.</li>
10080
10081 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
10082 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
10083
10084 </ol>
10085
10086 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
10087
10088 <ol>
10089
10090 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
10091 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
10092 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
10093 <pre>
10094 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
10095 </pre></li>
10096 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
10097 <pre>
10098 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
10099    apt-key add -
10100 apt-get update
10101 apt-get install freedombox-setup
10102 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
10103 </pre></li>
10104 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
10105
10106 </ol>
10107
10108 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
10109 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
10110 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
10111 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
10112 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
10113
10114 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
10115 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
10116 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
10117 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
10118
10119 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
10120 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
10121 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
10122 irc.debian.org and the
10123 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
10124 mailing list</a>.</p>
10125
10126 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
10127 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
10128 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
10129 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
10130 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
10131 default password is 'secret'.</p>
10132
10133       </div>
10134       <div class="tags">
10135
10136
10137         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10138
10139
10140       </div>
10141     </div>
10142     <div class="padding"></div>
10143
10144     <div class="entry">
10145       <div class="title">
10146         <a href="https://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>
10147       </div>
10148       <div class="date">
10149         18th August 2013
10150       </div>
10151       <div class="body">
10152         <p>Earlier, I reported about
10153 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
10154 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
10155 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
10156 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
10157 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
10158 currently on the disk.</p>
10159
10160 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
10161 <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>
10162 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
10163 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
10164 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
10165 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
10166 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
10167 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
10168 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
10169 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
10170 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
10171 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
10172 the broken disks.</p>
10173
10174       </div>
10175       <div class="tags">
10176
10177
10178         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10179
10180
10181       </div>
10182     </div>
10183     <div class="padding"></div>
10184
10185     <div class="entry">
10186       <div class="title">
10187         <a href="https://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>
10188       </div>
10189       <div class="date">
10190         17th July 2013
10191       </div>
10192       <div class="body">
10193         <p>Today I switched to
10194 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
10195 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
10196 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
10197 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
10198 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
10199 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
10200 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
10201 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
10202 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
10203 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
10204 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
10205 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
10206 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
10207 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
10208 station from now on.</p>
10209
10210 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
10211 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
10212 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
10213 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
10214 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
10215 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
10216 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
10217 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
10218 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
10219 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
10220 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
10221 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
10222
10223 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
10224 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
10225 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
10226 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
10227 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
10228 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
10229 parameters are tuned:</p>
10230
10231 <ul>
10232
10233 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
10234     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
10235
10236 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
10237     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
10238     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
10239
10240 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
10241     systems.</li>
10242
10243 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
10244     /etc/fstab.</li>
10245
10246 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
10247
10248 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
10249     cron.daily).</li>
10250
10251 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
10252     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
10253
10254 </ul>
10255
10256 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
10257 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
10258 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
10259 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
10260 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
10261 from getting the data on the disk (see
10262 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
10263 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
10264 right thing to do.</p>
10265
10266 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
10267 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
10268 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
10269
10270 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
10271 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
10272 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
10273 instead of during my work.</p>
10274
10275 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
10276 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
10277
10278 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
10279 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
10280 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
10281
10282 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
10283 there.</p>
10284
10285 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
10286 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
10287 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
10288 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
10289 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
10290 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
10291 back.</p>
10292
10293       </div>
10294       <div class="tags">
10295
10296
10297         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10298
10299
10300       </div>
10301     </div>
10302     <div class="padding"></div>
10303
10304     <div class="entry">
10305       <div class="title">
10306         <a href="https://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>
10307       </div>
10308       <div class="date">
10309         10th July 2013
10310       </div>
10311       <div class="body">
10312         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
10313 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
10314 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
10315 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
10316 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
10317 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
10318 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
10319 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
10320
10321 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
10322 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
10323 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
10324 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
10325 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
10326 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
10327 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
10328 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
10329 lock up when I download a new
10330 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
10331 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
10332 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
10333
10334 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
10335 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
10336 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
10337 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
10338 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
10339 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
10340
10341 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
10342 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
10343 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
10344 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
10345 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
10346 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
10347
10348 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
10349 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
10350 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
10351 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
10352 exist).</p>
10353
10354       </div>
10355       <div class="tags">
10356
10357
10358         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10359
10360
10361       </div>
10362     </div>
10363     <div class="padding"></div>
10364
10365     <div class="entry">
10366       <div class="title">
10367         <a href="https://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>
10368       </div>
10369       <div class="date">
10370          9th July 2013
10371       </div>
10372       <div class="body">
10373         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
10374 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
10375 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
10376 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
10377 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10378 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
10379 Bitraf</a>.</p>
10380
10381 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
10382 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
10383 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
10384 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
10385 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
10386
10387       </div>
10388       <div class="tags">
10389
10390
10391         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10392
10393
10394       </div>
10395     </div>
10396     <div class="padding"></div>
10397
10398     <div class="entry">
10399       <div class="title">
10400         <a href="https://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>
10401       </div>
10402       <div class="date">
10403          5th July 2013
10404       </div>
10405       <div class="body">
10406         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
10407 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
10408 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
10409 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
10410 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
10411 ended up picking a
10412 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
10413 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
10414 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
10415 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
10416 on that below.</p>
10417
10418 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
10419 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
10420 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
10421 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
10422 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
10423 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
10424 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
10425 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
10426 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
10427
10428 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
10429 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
10430 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
10431 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
10432 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
10433 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
10434 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
10435
10436 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
10437 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
10438
10439 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
10440 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
10441 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
10442 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
10443 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
10444 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
10445 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
10446 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
10447 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
10448 kernel developers as
10449 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
10450 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
10451 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
10452 Lenovo forums, both for
10453 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
10454 2012-11-10</a> and for
10455 <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
10456 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
10457 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
10458 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
10459 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
10460 There is even a
10461 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
10462 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
10463 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
10464
10465 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
10466 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
10467 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
10468 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
10469 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
10470 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
10471 fixed. :)</p>
10472
10473       </div>
10474       <div class="tags">
10475
10476
10477         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10478
10479
10480       </div>
10481     </div>
10482     <div class="padding"></div>
10483
10484     <div class="entry">
10485       <div class="title">
10486         <a href="https://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>
10487       </div>
10488       <div class="date">
10489          4th July 2013
10490       </div>
10491       <div class="body">
10492         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
10493 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
10494 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
10495 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
10496 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
10497 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
10498 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
10499 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
10500 with an expencive door stop.</p>
10501
10502 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
10503 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
10504 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
10505 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
10506 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
10507 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
10508 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
10509
10510 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
10511 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
10512 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
10513 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
10514 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
10515 new laptop now. :)</p>
10516
10517 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
10518
10519       </div>
10520       <div class="tags">
10521
10522
10523         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10524
10525
10526       </div>
10527     </div>
10528     <div class="padding"></div>
10529
10530     <div class="entry">
10531       <div class="title">
10532         <a href="https://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>
10533       </div>
10534       <div class="date">
10535         25th June 2013
10536       </div>
10537       <div class="body">
10538         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
10539 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
10540 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
10541 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
10542 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
10543 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
10544 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
10545 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
10546 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
10547 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
10548 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
10549
10550 <p><pre>
10551 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
10552 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
10553 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
10554 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
10555 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
10556 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
10557 firmware-ipw2x00
10558 firmware-ipw2x00
10559 Preconfiguring packages ...
10560 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
10561 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
10562 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
10563 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
10564 #
10565 </pre></p>
10566
10567 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
10568 printed instead:</p>
10569
10570 <p><pre>
10571 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
10572 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
10573 #
10574 </pre></p>
10575
10576 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
10577 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
10578
10579 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
10580 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
10581 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
10582 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
10583 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
10584 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
10585 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
10586 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
10587 machine.</p>
10588
10589 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
10590 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
10591 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
10592 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
10593 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
10594 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
10595
10596       </div>
10597       <div class="tags">
10598
10599
10600         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10601
10602
10603       </div>
10604     </div>
10605     <div class="padding"></div>
10606
10607     <div class="entry">
10608       <div class="title">
10609         <a href="https://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>
10610       </div>
10611       <div class="date">
10612         11th June 2013
10613       </div>
10614       <div class="body">
10615         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
10616 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
10617 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
10618 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
10619 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
10620 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
10621 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
10622 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
10623 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
10624 i915 driver used by the
10625 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
10626 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
10627
10628 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
10629 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
10630 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
10631 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
10632 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
10633
10634 <pre>
10635 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
10636 update-initramfs -u -k all
10637 </pre>
10638
10639 <p>Since March 2012 there is
10640 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
10641 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
10642 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
10643 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
10644 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
10645 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
10646 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
10647 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
10648 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
10649 number.</p>
10650
10651 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
10652 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
10653
10654 <p><pre>
10655 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
10656     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
10657     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
10658  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
10659  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
10660     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
10661  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
10662     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
10663  Latency: 0
10664  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
10665  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
10666  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
10667  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
10668  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
10669  Capabilities: <access denied>
10670  Kernel driver in use: i915
10671 </pre></p>
10672
10673 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
10674
10675 <p><pre>
10676 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
10677        ...
10678         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
10679         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
10680        ...
10681 }
10682 </pre></p>
10683
10684 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
10685 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
10686 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
10687 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
10688 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
10689 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
10690 yet shown up in
10691 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
10692 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
10693 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
10694 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
10695 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
10696 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
10697
10698 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
10699 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
10700 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
10701 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
10702 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
10703 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
10704 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
10705 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
10706 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
10707 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
10708 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
10709 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
10710
10711 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
10712 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
10713 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
10714 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
10715 backlight.</p>
10716
10717       </div>
10718       <div class="tags">
10719
10720
10721         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10722
10723
10724       </div>
10725     </div>
10726     <div class="padding"></div>
10727
10728     <div class="entry">
10729       <div class="title">
10730         <a href="https://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>
10731       </div>
10732       <div class="date">
10733         27th May 2013
10734       </div>
10735       <div class="body">
10736         <p>Two days ago, I asked
10737 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
10738 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
10739 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
10740 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
10741 and Windows 8.</p>
10742
10743 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
10744 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
10745 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
10746 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
10747 enough to tell.</p>
10748
10749 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
10750 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
10751 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
10752 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
10753 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
10754 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
10755 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
10756 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
10757 to follow.</p>
10758
10759 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
10760 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
10761 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
10762 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
10763 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
10764 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
10765 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
10766 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
10767
10768 <p>I've updated the
10769 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
10770 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
10771 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
10772 machine.</p>
10773
10774 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
10775 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
10776
10777       </div>
10778       <div class="tags">
10779
10780
10781         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10782
10783
10784       </div>
10785     </div>
10786     <div class="padding"></div>
10787
10788     <div class="entry">
10789       <div class="title">
10790         <a href="https://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>
10791       </div>
10792       <div class="date">
10793         25th May 2013
10794       </div>
10795       <div class="body">
10796         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
10797 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
10798 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
10799 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
10800 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
10801 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
10802
10803 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
10804 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
10805 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
10806 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
10807 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
10808 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
10809 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
10810 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
10811 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
10812 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
10813
10814 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
10815 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
10816 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
10817 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
10818 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
10819 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
10820
10821 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
10822 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
10823 on new Laptops?</p>
10824
10825       </div>
10826       <div class="tags">
10827
10828
10829         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10830
10831
10832       </div>
10833     </div>
10834     <div class="padding"></div>
10835
10836     <div class="entry">
10837       <div class="title">
10838         <a href="https://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>
10839       </div>
10840       <div class="date">
10841         17th May 2013
10842       </div>
10843       <div class="body">
10844         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
10845 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
10846 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
10847 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
10848 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
10849 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
10850 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
10851 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
10852 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
10853 donate some money</a>.
10854
10855 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
10856 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
10857 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
10858 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
10859 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
10860
10861 <p>The script,
10862 <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/>
10863 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
10864 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
10865 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
10866
10867 <ol>
10868
10869 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
10870 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
10871 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
10872     our configuration.</li>
10873 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
10874     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
10875     according to the profile specified in the config above,
10876     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
10877 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
10878     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
10879 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
10880
10881 </ol>
10882
10883 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
10884 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
10885 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
10886 the needed packages.</p>
10887
10888 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
10889 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
10890 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
10891 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
10892 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
10893 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
10894
10895 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
10896 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
10897 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
10898
10899 <p><pre>
10900 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
10901 DESKTOP="lxde"
10902 </pre></p>
10903
10904 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
10905 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
10906 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
10907 boot.</p>
10908
10909       </div>
10910       <div class="tags">
10911
10912
10913         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10914
10915
10916       </div>
10917     </div>
10918     <div class="padding"></div>
10919
10920     <div class="entry">
10921       <div class="title">
10922         <a href="https://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>
10923       </div>
10924       <div class="date">
10925         11th May 2013
10926       </div>
10927       <div class="body">
10928         <P>In January,
10929 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
10930 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
10931 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
10932 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
10933 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
10934 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
10935 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
10936 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
10937 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
10938 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
10939 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
10940 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
10941
10942 <p><table>
10943 <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>
10944 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
10945 <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>
10946 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
10947 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
10948 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
10949 <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>
10950 <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>
10951 <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>
10952 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
10953 </table></p>
10954
10955 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
10956 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
10957 available in experimental.</p>
10958
10959 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
10960 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
10961 for LEGO designers.</p>
10962
10963       </div>
10964       <div class="tags">
10965
10966
10967         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
10968
10969
10970       </div>
10971     </div>
10972     <div class="padding"></div>
10973
10974     <div class="entry">
10975       <div class="title">
10976         <a href="https://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>
10977       </div>
10978       <div class="date">
10979          5th May 2013
10980       </div>
10981       <div class="body">
10982         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
10983 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
10984 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
10985 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
10986 soon.</p>
10987
10988 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
10989 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
10990 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
10991 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
10992 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
10993 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
10994 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
10995 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
10996 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
10997 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
10998 Edu.</a>
10999
11000 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
11001 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
11002 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
11003 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
11004 follow.<p>
11005
11006       </div>
11007       <div class="tags">
11008
11009
11010         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11011
11012
11013       </div>
11014     </div>
11015     <div class="padding"></div>
11016
11017     <div class="entry">
11018       <div class="title">
11019         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
11020       </div>
11021       <div class="date">
11022          3rd April 2013
11023       </div>
11024       <div class="body">
11025         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
11026 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
11027 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
11028 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
11029
11030 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
11031 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
11032 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
11033 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
11034 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
11035 BTS. :)</p>
11036
11037       </div>
11038       <div class="tags">
11039
11040
11041         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11042
11043
11044       </div>
11045     </div>
11046     <div class="padding"></div>
11047
11048     <div class="entry">
11049       <div class="title">
11050         <a href="https://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>
11051       </div>
11052       <div class="date">
11053          2nd February 2013
11054       </div>
11055       <div class="body">
11056         <p>My
11057 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
11058 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
11059 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
11060 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
11061 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
11062 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
11063 version too.</p>
11064
11065 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
11066 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
11067 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
11068 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
11069 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
11070 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
11071 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
11072 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
11073
11074 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
11075 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
11076 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
11077 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
11078 it. :)</p>
11079
11080 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11081 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11082 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11083
11084       </div>
11085       <div class="tags">
11086
11087
11088         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11089
11090
11091       </div>
11092     </div>
11093     <div class="padding"></div>
11094
11095     <div class="entry">
11096       <div class="title">
11097         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
11098       </div>
11099       <div class="date">
11100         22nd January 2013
11101       </div>
11102       <div class="body">
11103         <p>Yesterday, I
11104 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
11105 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
11106 pluggable hardware devices, which I
11107 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
11108 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
11109 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
11110 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
11111 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
11112 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
11113 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
11114 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
11115 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
11116 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
11117
11118 <pre>
11119 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
11120 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
11121 </pre>
11122
11123 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
11124 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
11125 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
11126 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
11127
11128 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
11129 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
11130 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
11131 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
11132 word.</p>
11133
11134 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
11135 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
11136 process.</p>
11137
11138 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
11139 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
11140
11141       </div>
11142       <div class="tags">
11143
11144
11145         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11146
11147
11148       </div>
11149     </div>
11150     <div class="padding"></div>
11151
11152     <div class="entry">
11153       <div class="title">
11154         <a href="https://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>
11155       </div>
11156       <div class="date">
11157         21st January 2013
11158       </div>
11159       <div class="body">
11160         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
11161 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
11162 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
11163 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
11164 it, fetch the
11165 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
11166 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
11167 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
11168 autostart script.</p>
11169
11170 <p>The design is simple:</p>
11171
11172 <ul>
11173
11174 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
11175 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
11176
11177 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
11178 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
11179 initially did.</li>
11180
11181 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
11182 the APT database, a database
11183 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
11184 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
11185
11186 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
11187 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
11188 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
11189 package or packages.</li>
11190
11191 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
11192 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
11193
11194 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
11195 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
11196
11197 </ul>
11198
11199 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
11200 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
11201 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
11202 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
11203
11204 <p><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
11205 <br><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
11206 <br><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
11207 <br><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
11208 <br><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
11209
11210 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
11211 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
11212 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
11213 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
11214 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
11215 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
11216 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
11217 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
11218
11219 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
11220 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
11221 '<tt>svn checkout
11222 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
11223 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
11224 devscripts package.</p>
11225
11226 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
11227 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
11228 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
11229 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
11230 instructions</a> for details.</p>
11231
11232       </div>
11233       <div class="tags">
11234
11235
11236         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11237
11238
11239       </div>
11240     </div>
11241     <div class="padding"></div>
11242
11243     <div class="entry">
11244       <div class="title">
11245         <a href="https://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>
11246       </div>
11247       <div class="date">
11248         19th January 2013
11249       </div>
11250       <div class="body">
11251         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
11252 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
11253 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
11254 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
11255 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
11256 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
11257 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
11258 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
11259 not a durable solution.
11260
11261 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
11262 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
11263
11264 <ul>
11265
11266 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
11267   than A4).</li>
11268 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
11269 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
11270 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
11271 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
11272 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
11273 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
11274 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
11275 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
11276 size).</li>
11277 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
11278   X.org packages.</li>
11279 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
11280   the time).
11281
11282 </ul>
11283
11284 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
11285 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
11286 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
11287 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
11288 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
11289 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
11290 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
11291 still be useful.</p>
11292
11293 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
11294 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
11295 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
11296 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
11297 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
11298 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
11299
11300       </div>
11301       <div class="tags">
11302
11303
11304         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11305
11306
11307       </div>
11308     </div>
11309     <div class="padding"></div>
11310
11311     <div class="entry">
11312       <div class="title">
11313         <a href="https://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>
11314       </div>
11315       <div class="date">
11316         18th January 2013
11317       </div>
11318       <div class="body">
11319         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
11320 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
11321 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
11322 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
11323 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
11324 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
11325 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
11326
11327 <pre>
11328 #!/usr/bin/python
11329 import sys
11330 import apt
11331 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
11332     cache = apt.Cache()
11333     cache.open(None)
11334     thepkgs = []
11335     for pkg in cache:
11336         version = pkg.candidate
11337         if version is None:
11338             version = pkg.installed
11339         if version is None:
11340             continue
11341         record = version.record
11342         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
11343             continue
11344         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
11345         for t in mime_types:
11346             t = t.rstrip().strip()
11347             if t == mimetype:
11348                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
11349     return thepkgs
11350 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
11351 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
11352     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
11353 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
11354 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
11355     print "  %s" %pkg
11356 </pre>
11357
11358 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
11359
11360 <pre>
11361 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
11362 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
11363   gecko-mediaplayer
11364 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
11365 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
11366   browser-plugin-gnash
11367 %
11368 </pre>
11369
11370 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
11371 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
11372 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
11373 anyone working on adding it?</p>
11374
11375 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
11376 request for icweasel support for this feature is
11377 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
11378 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
11379 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
11380 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
11381
11382       </div>
11383       <div class="tags">
11384
11385
11386         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11387
11388
11389       </div>
11390     </div>
11391     <div class="padding"></div>
11392
11393     <div class="entry">
11394       <div class="title">
11395         <a href="https://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>
11396       </div>
11397       <div class="date">
11398         16th January 2013
11399       </div>
11400       <div class="body">
11401         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
11402 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
11403 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
11404 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
11405 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
11406 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
11407 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
11408 downloaded by the browser.</p>
11409
11410 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
11411 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
11412 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
11413 can be found on the
11414 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
11415 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
11416 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
11417 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
11418 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
11419
11420 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
11421
11422 <pre>
11423   count MIME type
11424   ----- -----------------------
11425      32 text/plain
11426      30 audio/mpeg
11427      29 image/png
11428      28 image/jpeg
11429      27 application/ogg
11430      26 audio/x-mp3
11431      25 image/tiff
11432      25 image/gif
11433      22 image/bmp
11434      22 audio/x-wav
11435      20 audio/x-flac
11436      19 audio/x-mpegurl
11437      18 video/x-ms-asf
11438      18 audio/x-musepack
11439      18 audio/x-mpeg
11440      18 application/x-ogg
11441      17 video/mpeg
11442      17 audio/x-scpls
11443      17 audio/ogg
11444      16 video/x-ms-wmv
11445 </pre>
11446
11447 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
11448
11449 <pre>
11450   count MIME type
11451   ----- -----------------------
11452      33 text/plain
11453      32 image/png
11454      32 image/jpeg
11455      29 audio/mpeg
11456      27 image/gif
11457      26 image/tiff
11458      26 application/ogg
11459      25 audio/x-mp3
11460      22 image/bmp
11461      21 audio/x-wav
11462      19 audio/x-mpegurl
11463      19 audio/x-mpeg
11464      18 video/mpeg
11465      18 audio/x-scpls
11466      18 audio/x-flac
11467      18 application/x-ogg
11468      17 video/x-ms-asf
11469      17 text/html
11470      17 audio/x-musepack
11471      16 image/x-xbitmap
11472 </pre>
11473
11474 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
11475
11476 <pre>
11477   count MIME type
11478   ----- -----------------------
11479      31 text/plain
11480      31 image/png
11481      31 image/jpeg
11482      29 audio/mpeg
11483      28 application/ogg
11484      27 image/gif
11485      26 image/tiff
11486      26 audio/x-mp3
11487      23 audio/x-wav
11488      22 image/bmp
11489      21 audio/x-flac
11490      20 audio/x-mpegurl
11491      19 audio/x-mpeg
11492      18 video/x-ms-asf
11493      18 video/mpeg
11494      18 audio/x-scpls
11495      18 application/x-ogg
11496      17 audio/x-musepack
11497      16 video/x-ms-wmv
11498      16 video/x-msvideo
11499 </pre>
11500
11501 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
11502 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
11503 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
11504 issues.</p>
11505
11506 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
11507 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
11508
11509       </div>
11510       <div class="tags">
11511
11512
11513         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11514
11515
11516       </div>
11517     </div>
11518     <div class="padding"></div>
11519
11520     <div class="entry">
11521       <div class="title">
11522         <a href="https://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>
11523       </div>
11524       <div class="date">
11525         15th January 2013
11526       </div>
11527       <div class="body">
11528         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
11529 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
11530 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
11531 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
11532 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
11533 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
11534 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
11535 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
11536 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
11537 packages.</p>
11538
11539 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
11540 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
11541 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
11542 modalias.</p>
11543
11544 <p><blockquote>
11545 Package: package-name
11546 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
11547 </blockquote></p>
11548
11549 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
11550 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
11551
11552 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
11553 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
11554
11555 <p><blockquote>
11556 Package: cheese
11557 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
11558 </blockquote></p>
11559
11560 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
11561 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
11562
11563 <p><blockquote>
11564 Package: pcmciautils
11565 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
11566 </blockquote></p>
11567
11568 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
11569 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
11570
11571 <p><blockquote>
11572 Package: colorhug-client
11573 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
11574 </blockquote></p>
11575
11576 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
11577 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
11578 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
11579
11580 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
11581 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
11582 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
11583 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
11584 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
11585 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
11586 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
11587 Raring.</p>
11588
11589 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
11590 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
11591 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
11592 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
11593 try the
11594 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
11595 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
11596 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
11597 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
11598
11599 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
11600 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
11601
11602 <p><blockquote>
11603 % ./hw-support-lookup
11604 <br>yubikey-personalization
11605 <br>%
11606 </blockquote></p>
11607
11608 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
11609 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
11610
11611 <p><blockquote>
11612 % ./hw-support-lookup
11613 <br>pcmciautils
11614 <br>%
11615 </blockquote></p>
11616
11617 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
11618 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
11619 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
11620
11621 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
11622 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
11623 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
11624 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
11625 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
11626 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
11627 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
11628 see if it work.</p>
11629
11630 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
11631 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
11632 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
11633 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
11634
11635       </div>
11636       <div class="tags">
11637
11638
11639         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11640
11641
11642       </div>
11643     </div>
11644     <div class="padding"></div>
11645
11646     <div class="entry">
11647       <div class="title">
11648         <a href="https://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>
11649       </div>
11650       <div class="date">
11651         14th January 2013
11652       </div>
11653       <div class="body">
11654         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
11655 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
11656 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
11657 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
11658 in
11659 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11660 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
11661
11662 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
11663
11664 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
11665 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
11666 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
11667 &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;,
11668 &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
11669 &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;.
11670
11671 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
11672 this shell script:</p>
11673
11674 <pre>
11675 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
11676 </pre>
11677
11678 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
11679 using modinfo:</p>
11680
11681 <pre>
11682 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
11683 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
11684 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
11685 %
11686 </pre>
11687
11688 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
11689
11690 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
11691 Bridge memory controller:</p>
11692
11693 <p><blockquote>
11694 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
11695 </blockquote></p>
11696
11697 <p>This represent these values:</p>
11698
11699 <pre>
11700  v   00008086  (vendor)
11701  d   00002770  (device)
11702  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
11703  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
11704  bc  06        (bus class)
11705  sc  00        (bus subclass)
11706  i   00        (interface)
11707 </pre>
11708
11709 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
11710 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
11711 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
11712 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
11713
11714 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
11715 means.</p>
11716
11717 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
11718
11719 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
11720 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
11721
11722 <p><blockquote>
11723 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
11724 </blockquote></p>
11725
11726 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
11727
11728 <pre>
11729  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
11730  p    0001  (device product)
11731  d    0206  (bcddevice)
11732  dc     09  (device class)
11733  dsc    00  (device subclass)
11734  dp     00  (device protocol)
11735  ic     09  (interface class)
11736  isc    00  (interface subclass)
11737  ip     00  (interface protocol)
11738 </pre>
11739
11740 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
11741 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
11742 these alias entries show up:</p>
11743
11744 <p><blockquote>
11745 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
11746 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
11747 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
11748 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
11749 </blockquote></p>
11750
11751 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
11752 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
11753 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
11754
11755 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
11756
11757 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
11758 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
11759
11760 <p><blockquote>
11761 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
11762 </blockquote></p>
11763
11764 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
11765
11766 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
11767
11768 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
11769 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
11770 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
11771
11772 <p><blockquote>
11773 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
11774 </blockquote></p>
11775
11776 <p>The values present are</p>
11777
11778 <pre>
11779  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
11780  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
11781  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
11782  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
11783  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
11784  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
11785  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
11786  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
11787  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
11788  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
11789  ct   10             (chassis type)
11790  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
11791 </pre>
11792
11793 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
11794 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
11795
11796 <pre>
11797   3 Desktop
11798   4 Low Profile Desktop
11799   5 Pizza Box
11800   6 Mini Tower
11801   7 Tower
11802   8 Portable
11803   9 Laptop
11804  10 Notebook
11805  11 Hand Held
11806  12 Docking Station
11807  13 All In One
11808  14 Sub Notebook
11809  15 Space-saving
11810  16 Lunch Box
11811  17 Main Server Chassis
11812  18 Expansion Chassis
11813  19 Sub Chassis
11814  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
11815  21 Peripheral Chassis
11816  22 RAID Chassis
11817  23 Rack Mount Chassis
11818  24 Sealed-case PC
11819  25 Multi-system
11820  26 CompactPCI
11821  27 AdvancedTCA
11822  28 Blade
11823  29 Blade Enclosing
11824 </pre>
11825
11826 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
11827 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
11828 claim it is a desktop.</p>
11829
11830 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
11831
11832 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
11833 test machine:</p>
11834
11835 <p><blockquote>
11836 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
11837 </blockquote></p>
11838
11839 <p>The values present are</p>
11840
11841 <pre>
11842   ty  01  (type)
11843   pr  00  (prototype)
11844   id  00  (id)
11845   ex  00  (extra)
11846 </pre>
11847
11848 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
11849 the valid values are.</p>
11850
11851 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
11852
11853 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
11854 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
11855 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
11856 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
11857 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
11858 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
11859 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
11860
11861 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
11862
11863 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
11864 one can use the following shell script:</p>
11865
11866 <pre>
11867   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
11868     echo "$id" ; \
11869     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
11870   done
11871 </pre>
11872
11873 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
11874 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
11875
11876 <pre>
11877   acpi:ACPI0003:
11878     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
11879   acpi:device:
11880   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
11881   acpi:IBM0068:
11882     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
11883     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
11884     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
11885     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
11886   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
11887     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
11888     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
11889     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
11890   [...]
11891 </pre>
11892
11893 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
11894 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
11895 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
11896 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
11897
11898 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
11899 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
11900 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
11901
11902       </div>
11903       <div class="tags">
11904
11905
11906         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11907
11908
11909       </div>
11910     </div>
11911     <div class="padding"></div>
11912
11913     <div class="entry">
11914       <div class="title">
11915         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
11916       </div>
11917       <div class="date">
11918         10th January 2013
11919       </div>
11920       <div class="body">
11921         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
11922 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
11923 Launcher and updated the Debian package
11924 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
11925 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
11926 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
11927 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
11928 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
11929 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
11930 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
11931 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
11932 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
11933 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
11934 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
11935 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
11936 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
11937 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
11938 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
11939
11940       </div>
11941       <div class="tags">
11942
11943
11944         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11945
11946
11947       </div>
11948     </div>
11949     <div class="padding"></div>
11950
11951     <div class="entry">
11952       <div class="title">
11953         <a href="https://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>
11954       </div>
11955       <div class="date">
11956          9th January 2013
11957       </div>
11958       <div class="body">
11959         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
11960 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
11961 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
11962 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
11963 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
11964 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
11965 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
11966 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
11967 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
11968 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
11969 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
11970
11971 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
11972 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
11973 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
11974 simple:
11975
11976 <ul>
11977
11978 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
11979   starting when a user log in.</li>
11980
11981 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
11982   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
11983
11984 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
11985   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
11986   packages.</li>
11987
11988 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
11989   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
11990
11991 </ul>
11992
11993 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
11994 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
11995 discover database to find packages and
11996 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
11997 packages.</p>
11998
11999 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
12000 draft package is now checked into
12001 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
12002 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
12003 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
12004 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
12005 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
12006 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
12007 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
12008 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
12009 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
12010 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
12011 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
12012 because of the freeze).</p>
12013
12014 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
12015 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
12016 inserted):</p>
12017
12018 <p align="center"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
12019
12020 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
12021 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
12022 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
12023
12024 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
12025 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
12026 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
12027 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
12028 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
12029 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
12030 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
12031
12032 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
12033 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
12034 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
12035 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
12036 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
12037 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
12038 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
12039 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
12040 not be installed?</p>
12041
12042 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
12043 please send me an email. :)</p>
12044
12045       </div>
12046       <div class="tags">
12047
12048
12049         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
12050
12051
12052       </div>
12053     </div>
12054     <div class="padding"></div>
12055
12056     <div class="entry">
12057       <div class="title">
12058         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
12059       </div>
12060       <div class="date">
12061          2nd January 2013
12062       </div>
12063       <div class="body">
12064         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
12065 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
12066 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
12067 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
12068 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
12069 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
12070 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
12071 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
12072 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
12073 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
12074
12075 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
12076 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
12077 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
12078
12079       </div>
12080       <div class="tags">
12081
12082
12083         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
12084
12085
12086       </div>
12087     </div>
12088     <div class="padding"></div>
12089
12090     <div class="entry">
12091       <div class="title">
12092         <a href="https://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>
12093       </div>
12094       <div class="date">
12095         25th December 2012
12096       </div>
12097       <div class="body">
12098         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
12099 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
12100
12101 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
12102 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
12103 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
12104 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
12105 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
12106 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
12107 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
12108 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
12109 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
12110 name.</p>
12111
12112 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
12113 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
12114 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
12115
12116 <blockquote><pre>
12117 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
12118 cd bitcoin
12119 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
12120 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
12121 </pre></blockquote>
12122
12123 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
12124 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
12125 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
12126 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
12127 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
12128 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
12129 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
12130 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
12131 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
12132
12133 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
12134 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
12135 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
12136
12137       </div>
12138       <div class="tags">
12139
12140
12141         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12142
12143
12144       </div>
12145     </div>
12146     <div class="padding"></div>
12147
12148     <div class="entry">
12149       <div class="title">
12150         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
12151       </div>
12152       <div class="date">
12153         21st December 2012
12154       </div>
12155       <div class="body">
12156         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
12157 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
12158 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
12159 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
12160 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
12161 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
12162 is now maintained by a
12163 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
12164 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
12165 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
12166 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
12167 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
12168 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
12169 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
12170 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
12171 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
12172 Corallo in a
12173 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
12174 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
12175 Debian package.</p>
12176
12177 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
12178 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
12179 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
12180 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
12181 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
12182 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
12183 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
12184 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
12185 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
12186 new version to unstable.
12187
12188 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
12189 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
12190 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
12191 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
12192 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
12193 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
12194 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
12195 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
12196 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
12197 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
12198 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
12199 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
12200 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
12201 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
12202 have not tested them.</p>
12203
12204 <p>My
12205 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
12206 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
12207 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
12208 years ago, as can be
12209 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
12210 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
12211 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
12212 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
12213 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
12214 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
12215 the same address as last time,
12216 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
12217
12218       </div>
12219       <div class="tags">
12220
12221
12222         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12223
12224
12225       </div>
12226     </div>
12227     <div class="padding"></div>
12228
12229     <div class="entry">
12230       <div class="title">
12231         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12232       </div>
12233       <div class="date">
12234          7th September 2012
12235       </div>
12236       <div class="body">
12237         <p>As I
12238 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12239 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12240 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12241 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12242 repository for the project</a>.</p>
12243
12244 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12245 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12246 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12247 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
12248
12249 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12250 PostScript formats at
12251 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12252 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
12253
12254       </div>
12255       <div class="tags">
12256
12257
12258         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
12259
12260
12261       </div>
12262     </div>
12263     <div class="padding"></div>
12264
12265     <div class="entry">
12266       <div class="title">
12267         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
12268       </div>
12269       <div class="date">
12270         16th August 2012
12271       </div>
12272       <div class="body">
12273         <p>I dag fyller
12274 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
12275 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
12276 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
12277
12278       </div>
12279       <div class="tags">
12280
12281
12282         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
12283
12284
12285       </div>
12286     </div>
12287     <div class="padding"></div>
12288
12289     <div class="entry">
12290       <div class="title">
12291         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12292       </div>
12293       <div class="date">
12294         24th June 2012
12295       </div>
12296       <div class="body">
12297         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
12298 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
12299 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
12300 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
12301 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
12302 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
12303 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
12304 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
12305 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
12306 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
12307 missing in my book.</p>
12308
12309 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
12310 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
12311 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
12312 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
12313 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
12314 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
12315 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
12316
12317       </div>
12318       <div class="tags">
12319
12320
12321         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
12322
12323
12324       </div>
12325     </div>
12326     <div class="padding"></div>
12327
12328     <div class="entry">
12329       <div class="title">
12330         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
12331       </div>
12332       <div class="date">
12333         21st November 2011
12334       </div>
12335       <div class="body">
12336         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
12337 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
12338 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
12339 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
12340 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
12341 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
12342 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
12343 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
12344 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
12345 the tools to do so.</p>
12346
12347 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
12348 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
12349 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
12350 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
12351
12352 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
12353 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
12354 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
12355 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
12356 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
12357 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
12358 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
12359 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
12360
12361 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
12362 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
12363 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
12364
12365 <p><pre>
12366 #!/usr/bin/perl
12367 use strict;
12368 use warnings;
12369 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
12370 BEGIN {
12371     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
12372     my %rhelmodules = (
12373         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
12374         );
12375     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
12376         eval "use $module;";
12377         if ($@) {
12378             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
12379             system("yum install -y $pkg");
12380             eval "use $module;";
12381         }
12382     }
12383 }
12384 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
12385
12386 upgrade_dell();
12387
12388 exit 0;
12389
12390 sub run_firmware_script {
12391     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
12392     unless ($script) {
12393         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
12394         exit 1
12395     }
12396     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
12397
12398     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
12399         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
12400     } else {
12401         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
12402     }
12403 }
12404
12405 sub run_firmware_scripts {
12406     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
12407     # Run firmware packages
12408     for my $dir (@dirs) {
12409         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
12410         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
12411         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
12412             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
12413             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
12414         }
12415         closedir $dh;
12416     }
12417 }
12418
12419 sub download {
12420     my $url = shift;
12421     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
12422     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
12423 }
12424
12425 sub upgrade_dell {
12426     my @dirs;
12427     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
12428     chomp $product;
12429
12430     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
12431
12432         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
12433         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
12434
12435         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
12436             CLEANUP => 1
12437             );
12438         chdir($tmpdir);
12439         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
12440         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
12441         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
12442         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
12443         my $fwopts = "-q";
12444         if (@paths) {
12445             for my $url (@paths) {
12446                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
12447             }
12448             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
12449         } else {
12450             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12451             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12452         }
12453         chdir('/');
12454     } else {
12455         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12456         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12457     }
12458 }
12459
12460 sub fetch_dell_fw {
12461     my $path = shift;
12462     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
12463     download($url);
12464 }
12465
12466 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
12467 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
12468 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
12469 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
12470     my $filename = shift;
12471
12472     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
12473     chomp $product;
12474     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
12475
12476     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
12477
12478     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
12479     my @paths;
12480     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
12481         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
12482         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
12483         my $oscode;
12484         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
12485             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
12486         } else {
12487             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
12488         }
12489         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
12490         {
12491             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
12492         }
12493     }
12494     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
12495         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
12496
12497         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
12498         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
12499
12500         my $cpath = $component->{path};
12501         for my $path (@paths) {
12502             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
12503                 push(@paths, $cpath);
12504             }
12505         }
12506     }
12507     return @paths;
12508 }
12509 </pre>
12510
12511 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
12512 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
12513 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
12514 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
12515 outdated.</p>
12516
12517       </div>
12518       <div class="tags">
12519
12520
12521         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12522
12523
12524       </div>
12525     </div>
12526     <div class="padding"></div>
12527
12528     <div class="entry">
12529       <div class="title">
12530         <a href="https://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>
12531       </div>
12532       <div class="date">
12533          4th August 2011
12534       </div>
12535       <div class="body">
12536         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
12537 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
12538 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
12539 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
12540 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
12541 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
12542 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
12543 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
12544 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
12545
12546 <p><blockquote>
12547 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
12548 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
12549 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
12550 </blockquote></p>
12551
12552 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
12553 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
12554 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
12555 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
12556 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
12557 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
12558 hard to explain.</p>
12559
12560 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
12561 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
12562 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
12563 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
12564 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
12565 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
12566 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
12567 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
12568 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
12569 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
12570 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
12571 mode).</p>
12572
12573 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
12574 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
12575 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
12576 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
12577 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
12578 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
12579 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
12580 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
12581 after visiting single user mode.</p>
12582
12583 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
12584 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
12585 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
12586 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
12587 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
12588 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
12589 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
12590 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
12591
12592 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
12593 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
12594 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
12595
12596       </div>
12597       <div class="tags">
12598
12599
12600         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12601
12602
12603       </div>
12604     </div>
12605     <div class="padding"></div>
12606
12607     <div class="entry">
12608       <div class="title">
12609         <a href="https://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>
12610       </div>
12611       <div class="date">
12612         30th July 2011
12613       </div>
12614       <div class="body">
12615         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
12616 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
12617 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
12618 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
12619 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
12620 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
12621 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
12622 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
12623 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
12624 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
12625 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
12626 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
12627 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
12628
12629 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
12630 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
12631 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
12632 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
12633 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
12634 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
12635 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
12636 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
12637 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
12638
12639 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
12640 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
12641 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
12642 is presented.</p>
12643
12644 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
12645 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
12646 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
12647 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
12648 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
12649 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
12650 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
12651 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
12652 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
12653 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
12654 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
12655 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
12656 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
12657 find time to push this forward.</p>
12658
12659       </div>
12660       <div class="tags">
12661
12662
12663         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12664
12665
12666       </div>
12667     </div>
12668     <div class="padding"></div>
12669
12670     <div class="entry">
12671       <div class="title">
12672         <a href="https://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>
12673       </div>
12674       <div class="date">
12675         29th July 2011
12676       </div>
12677       <div class="body">
12678         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
12679 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
12680 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
12681 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
12682 issues.</p>
12683
12684 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
12685 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
12686 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
12687
12688 <ol>
12689
12690 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
12691 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
12692 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
12693 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
12694 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
12695 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
12696 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
12697 Debian.</li>
12698
12699 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
12700 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
12701 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
12702 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
12703 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
12704 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
12705 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
12706 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
12707 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
12708 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
12709 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
12710 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
12711 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
12712
12713 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
12714 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
12715 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
12716 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
12717 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
12718 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
12719 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
12720 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
12721 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
12722 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
12723
12724 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
12725 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
12726 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
12727 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
12728 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
12729 latter behaviour.</li>
12730
12731 </ol>
12732
12733 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
12734 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
12735 it do not matter much.</p>
12736
12737 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
12738 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
12739 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
12740
12741       </div>
12742       <div class="tags">
12743
12744
12745         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12746
12747
12748       </div>
12749     </div>
12750     <div class="padding"></div>
12751
12752     <div class="entry">
12753       <div class="title">
12754         <a href="https://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>
12755       </div>
12756       <div class="date">
12757         26th July 2011
12758       </div>
12759       <div class="body">
12760         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
12761 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
12762 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
12763 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
12764 security support for a few years.</p>
12765
12766 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
12767 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
12768 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
12769 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
12770 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
12771 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
12772 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
12773 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
12774 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
12775 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
12776 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
12777 easier in the future.</p>
12778
12779 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
12780 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
12781 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
12782 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
12783 do not have time for.</p>
12784
12785       </div>
12786       <div class="tags">
12787
12788
12789         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
12790
12791
12792       </div>
12793     </div>
12794     <div class="padding"></div>
12795
12796     <div class="entry">
12797       <div class="title">
12798         <a href="https://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>
12799       </div>
12800       <div class="date">
12801          3rd April 2011
12802       </div>
12803       <div class="body">
12804         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
12805 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
12806 update in English.</p>
12807
12808 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
12809 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
12810 of the British service
12811 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
12812 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
12813 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
12814 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
12815 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
12816 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
12817 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
12818 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
12819 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
12820 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
12821 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
12822 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
12823 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
12824
12825 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
12826 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
12827 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
12828 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
12829 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
12830 public infrastructure.</p>
12831
12832 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
12833 such service?</p>
12834
12835       </div>
12836       <div class="tags">
12837
12838
12839         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
12840
12841
12842       </div>
12843     </div>
12844     <div class="padding"></div>
12845
12846     <div class="entry">
12847       <div class="title">
12848         <a href="https://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>
12849       </div>
12850       <div class="date">
12851         28th January 2011
12852       </div>
12853       <div class="body">
12854         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
12855 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
12856 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
12857 available on the Internet, and check our locally
12858 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
12859 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
12860 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
12861 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
12862 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
12863 out which security holes were present in our free software
12864 collection.</p>
12865
12866 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
12867 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
12868 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
12869 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
12870 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
12871 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
12872 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
12873 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
12874 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
12875 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
12876 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
12877 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
12878 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
12879 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
12880 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
12881 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
12882
12883 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
12884 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
12885 check out, one could look up
12886 <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
12887 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
12888 The most recent one is
12889 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
12890 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
12891 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
12892
12893 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
12894 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
12895 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
12896 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
12897 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
12898 security issues out.</p>
12899
12900 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
12901 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
12902 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
12903 RHEL is providing
12904 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
12905 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
12906 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
12907
12908 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
12909 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
12910 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
12911 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
12912 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
12913 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
12914 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
12915 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
12916 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
12917 established soon.</p>
12918
12919 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
12920 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
12921 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
12922 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
12923 for their packages.</p>
12924
12925       </div>
12926       <div class="tags">
12927
12928
12929         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
12930
12931
12932       </div>
12933     </div>
12934     <div class="padding"></div>
12935
12936     <div class="entry">
12937       <div class="title">
12938         <a href="https://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>
12939       </div>
12940       <div class="date">
12941         23rd January 2011
12942       </div>
12943       <div class="body">
12944         <p>In the
12945 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
12946 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
12947 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
12948 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
12949 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
12950 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
12951 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
12952 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
12953 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
12954 one of my machines like this:</p>
12955
12956 <pre>
12957 loaded modules:
12958 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
12959 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
12960 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
12961 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
12962 10de:03ec pata_amd
12963 10de:03f6 sata_nv
12964 1022:1103 k8temp
12965 109e:036e bttv
12966 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
12967 11ab:4364 sky2
12968 </pre>
12969
12970 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
12971 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
12972
12973 <pre>
12974 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
12975     echo loaded pci modules:
12976     (
12977         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
12978         for address in * ; do
12979             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12980                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12981                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12982                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12983                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
12984                     echo "$id $module"
12985                 fi
12986             fi
12987         done
12988     )
12989     echo
12990 fi
12991 </pre>
12992
12993 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
12994 mappings:</p>
12995
12996 <pre>
12997 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
12998     echo loaded usb modules:
12999     (
13000         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
13001         for address in * ; do
13002             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
13003                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
13004                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
13005                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
13006                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
13007                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
13008                         echo "$id $module"
13009                     fi
13010                 fi
13011             fi
13012         done
13013     )
13014     echo
13015 fi
13016 </pre>
13017
13018 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
13019 well.</p>
13020
13021       </div>
13022       <div class="tags">
13023
13024
13025         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13026
13027
13028       </div>
13029     </div>
13030     <div class="padding"></div>
13031
13032     <div class="entry">
13033       <div class="title">
13034         <a href="https://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>
13035       </div>
13036       <div class="date">
13037         22nd December 2010
13038       </div>
13039       <div class="body">
13040         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
13041 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
13042 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
13043 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
13044 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
13045 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
13046 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
13047 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
13048 university.</p>
13049
13050 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
13051 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
13052 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
13053 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
13054 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
13055 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
13056 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
13057 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
13058
13059 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
13060 I perform on a new model.</p>
13061
13062 <ul>
13063
13064 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
13065 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
13066 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
13067
13068 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
13069 installation, X.org is working.</li>
13070
13071 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
13072 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
13073 reported by the program.</li>
13074
13075 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
13076 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
13077 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
13078 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
13079 normally test this by playing
13080 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
13081 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
13082
13083 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
13084 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13085
13086 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
13087 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13088
13089 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
13090 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
13091
13092 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
13093 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
13094 few.</li>
13095
13096 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
13097 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
13098 notice this.</li>
13099
13100 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
13101 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
13102 resume.</li>
13103
13104 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
13105 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
13106 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
13107 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
13108 not.</li>
13109
13110 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
13111 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
13112 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
13113 existence.</li>
13114
13115 </ul>
13116
13117 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
13118 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
13119 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
13120 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
13121 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
13122 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
13123 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
13124 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
13125
13126       </div>
13127       <div class="tags">
13128
13129
13130         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13131
13132
13133       </div>
13134     </div>
13135     <div class="padding"></div>
13136
13137     <div class="entry">
13138       <div class="title">
13139         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
13140       </div>
13141       <div class="date">
13142         11th December 2010
13143       </div>
13144       <div class="body">
13145         <p>As I continue to explore
13146 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
13147 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
13148 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
13149
13150 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
13151 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
13152 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
13153 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
13154 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
13155 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
13156 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
13157 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
13158 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
13159 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
13160 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
13161 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
13162 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
13163 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
13164 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
13165 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
13166 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
13167 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
13168 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
13169 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
13170
13171 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
13172 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
13173 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
13174 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
13175 If the Skolelinux foundation
13176 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
13177 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
13178 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
13179 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
13180 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
13181 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
13182 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
13183 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
13184
13185 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
13186 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
13187 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
13188 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
13189 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
13190 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
13191 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
13192 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
13193 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
13194 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
13195 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
13196 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
13197 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
13198 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
13199 currencies.</p>
13200
13201 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
13202 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
13203 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
13204 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
13205 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
13206 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
13207 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
13208 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
13209 BitCoins.  Check out
13210 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
13211 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
13212 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
13213 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
13214 yet.</p>
13215
13216 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
13217 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
13218 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
13219 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
13220 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
13221
13222       </div>
13223       <div class="tags">
13224
13225
13226         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13227
13228
13229       </div>
13230     </div>
13231     <div class="padding"></div>
13232
13233     <div class="entry">
13234       <div class="title">
13235         <a href="https://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>
13236       </div>
13237       <div class="date">
13238         10th December 2010
13239       </div>
13240       <div class="body">
13241         <p>With this weeks lawless
13242 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
13243 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
13244 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
13245 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
13246 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
13247 A blog post from
13248 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
13249 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
13250 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
13251 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
13252 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
13253 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
13254 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
13255
13256 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
13257 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
13258 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
13259 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
13260 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
13261 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
13262 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
13263 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
13264 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
13265 Debian</a> soon.</p>
13266
13267 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
13268 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
13269 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
13270 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
13271 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
13272 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
13273 you can even get
13274 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
13275 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
13276 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
13277 on the current exchange rates.</p>
13278
13279 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
13280 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
13281 donations to the address
13282 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
13283
13284       </div>
13285       <div class="tags">
13286
13287
13288         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13289
13290
13291       </div>
13292     </div>
13293     <div class="padding"></div>
13294
13295     <div class="entry">
13296       <div class="title">
13297         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
13298       </div>
13299       <div class="date">
13300         27th November 2010
13301       </div>
13302       <div class="body">
13303         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
13304 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
13305 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
13306 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
13307 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
13308 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
13309 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
13310 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
13311
13312 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
13313 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13314 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
13315 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
13316 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
13317 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
13318 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
13319 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
13320 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
13321 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
13322 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
13323
13324 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
13325 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
13326 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
13327 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
13328 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
13329 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
13330 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
13331 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
13332 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
13333 what is going on.</p>
13334
13335       </div>
13336       <div class="tags">
13337
13338
13339         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13340
13341
13342       </div>
13343     </div>
13344     <div class="padding"></div>
13345
13346     <div class="entry">
13347       <div class="title">
13348         <a href="https://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>
13349       </div>
13350       <div class="date">
13351         22nd November 2010
13352       </div>
13353       <div class="body">
13354         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
13355 upgrade testing of the
13356 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13357 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
13358 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
13359 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
13360
13361 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13362
13363 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13364
13365 <blockquote><p>
13366   apache2.2-bin
13367   aptdaemon
13368   baobab
13369   binfmt-support
13370   browser-plugin-gnash
13371   cheese-common
13372   cli-common
13373   cups-pk-helper
13374   dmz-cursor-theme
13375   empathy
13376   empathy-common
13377   freedesktop-sound-theme
13378   freeglut3
13379   gconf-defaults-service
13380   gdm-themes
13381   gedit-plugins
13382   geoclue
13383   geoclue-hostip
13384   geoclue-localnet
13385   geoclue-manual
13386   geoclue-yahoo
13387   gnash
13388   gnash-common
13389   gnome
13390   gnome-backgrounds
13391   gnome-cards-data
13392   gnome-codec-install
13393   gnome-core
13394   gnome-desktop-environment
13395   gnome-disk-utility
13396   gnome-screenshot
13397   gnome-search-tool
13398   gnome-session-canberra
13399   gnome-system-log
13400   gnome-themes-extras
13401   gnome-themes-more
13402   gnome-user-share
13403   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13404   gstreamer0.10-tools
13405   gtk2-engines
13406   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13407   gtk2-engines-smooth
13408   hamster-applet
13409   libapache2-mod-dnssd
13410   libapr1
13411   libaprutil1
13412   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
13413   libaprutil1-ldap
13414   libart2.0-cil
13415   libboost-date-time1.42.0
13416   libboost-python1.42.0
13417   libboost-thread1.42.0
13418   libchamplain-0.4-0
13419   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
13420   libcheese-gtk18
13421   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13422   libcryptui0
13423   libdiscid0
13424   libelf1
13425   libepc-1.0-2
13426   libepc-common
13427   libepc-ui-1.0-2
13428   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13429   libfreerdp0
13430   libgconf2.0-cil
13431   libgdata-common
13432   libgdata7
13433   libgdu-gtk0
13434   libgee2
13435   libgeoclue0
13436   libgexiv2-0
13437   libgif4
13438   libglade2.0-cil
13439   libglib2.0-cil
13440   libgmime2.4-cil
13441   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13442   libgnome2.24-cil
13443   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
13444   libgpod-common
13445   libgpod4
13446   libgtk2.0-cil
13447   libgtkglext1
13448   libgtksourceview2.0-common
13449   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13450   libmono-addins0.2-cil
13451   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
13452   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13453   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
13454   libmono-posix2.0-cil
13455   libmono-security2.0-cil
13456   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13457   libmono-system2.0-cil
13458   libmtp8
13459   libmusicbrainz3-6
13460   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
13461   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
13462   libopal3.6.8
13463   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
13464   libpt2.6.7
13465   libpython2.6
13466   librpm1
13467   librpmio1
13468   libsdl1.2debian
13469   libsrtp0
13470   libssh-4
13471   libtelepathy-farsight0
13472   libtelepathy-glib0
13473   libtidy-0.99-0
13474   media-player-info
13475   mesa-utils
13476   mono-2.0-gac
13477   mono-gac
13478   mono-runtime
13479   nautilus-sendto
13480   nautilus-sendto-empathy
13481   p7zip-full
13482   pkg-config
13483   python-aptdaemon
13484   python-aptdaemon-gtk
13485   python-axiom
13486   python-beautifulsoup
13487   python-bugbuddy
13488   python-clientform
13489   python-coherence
13490   python-configobj
13491   python-crypto
13492   python-cupshelpers
13493   python-elementtree
13494   python-epsilon
13495   python-evolution
13496   python-feedparser
13497   python-gdata
13498   python-gdbm
13499   python-gst0.10
13500   python-gtkglext1
13501   python-gtksourceview2
13502   python-httplib2
13503   python-louie
13504   python-mako
13505   python-markupsafe
13506   python-mechanize
13507   python-nevow
13508   python-notify
13509   python-opengl
13510   python-openssl
13511   python-pam
13512   python-pkg-resources
13513   python-pyasn1
13514   python-pysqlite2
13515   python-rdflib
13516   python-serial
13517   python-tagpy
13518   python-twisted-bin
13519   python-twisted-conch
13520   python-twisted-core
13521   python-twisted-web
13522   python-utidylib
13523   python-webkit
13524   python-xdg
13525   python-zope.interface
13526   remmina
13527   remmina-plugin-data
13528   remmina-plugin-rdp
13529   remmina-plugin-vnc
13530   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13531   rhythmbox-plugins
13532   rpm-common
13533   rpm2cpio
13534   seahorse-plugins
13535   shotwell
13536   software-center
13537   system-config-printer-udev
13538   telepathy-gabble
13539   telepathy-mission-control-5
13540   telepathy-salut
13541   tomboy
13542   totem
13543   totem-coherence
13544   totem-mozilla
13545   totem-plugins
13546   transmission-common
13547   xdg-user-dirs
13548   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
13549   xserver-xephyr
13550 </p></blockquote>
13551
13552 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13553
13554 <blockquote><p>
13555   cheese
13556   ekiga
13557   eog
13558   epiphany-extensions
13559   evolution-exchange
13560   fast-user-switch-applet
13561   file-roller
13562   gcalctool
13563   gconf-editor
13564   gdm
13565   gedit
13566   gedit-common
13567   gnome-games
13568   gnome-games-data
13569   gnome-nettool
13570   gnome-system-tools
13571   gnome-themes
13572   gnuchess
13573   gucharmap
13574   guile-1.8-libs
13575   libavahi-ui0
13576   libdmx1
13577   libgalago3
13578   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13579   libgtksourceview2.0-0
13580   liblircclient0
13581   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
13582   libspeexdsp1
13583   libsvga1
13584   rhythmbox
13585   seahorse
13586   sound-juicer
13587   system-config-printer
13588   totem-common
13589   transmission-gtk
13590   vinagre
13591   vino
13592 </p></blockquote>
13593
13594 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13595
13596 <blockquote><p>
13597   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13598 </p></blockquote>
13599
13600 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13601
13602 <blockquote><p>
13603 [nothing]
13604 </p></blockquote>
13605
13606 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
13607
13608 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13609
13610 <blockquote><p>
13611   ksmserver
13612 </p></blockquote>
13613
13614 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13615
13616 <blockquote><p>
13617   kwin
13618   network-manager-kde
13619 </p></blockquote>
13620
13621 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13622
13623 <blockquote><p>
13624   arts
13625   dolphin
13626   freespacenotifier
13627   google-gadgets-gst
13628   google-gadgets-xul
13629   kappfinder
13630   kcalc
13631   kcharselect
13632   kde-core
13633   kde-plasma-desktop
13634   kde-standard
13635   kde-window-manager
13636   kdeartwork
13637   kdeartwork-emoticons
13638   kdeartwork-style
13639   kdeartwork-theme-icon
13640   kdebase
13641   kdebase-apps
13642   kdebase-workspace
13643   kdebase-workspace-bin
13644   kdebase-workspace-data
13645   kdeeject
13646   kdelibs
13647   kdeplasma-addons
13648   kdeutils
13649   kdewallpapers
13650   kdf
13651   kfloppy
13652   kgpg
13653   khelpcenter4
13654   kinfocenter
13655   konq-plugins-l10n
13656   konqueror-nsplugins
13657   kscreensaver
13658   kscreensaver-xsavers
13659   ktimer
13660   kwrite
13661   libgle3
13662   libkde4-ruby1.8
13663   libkonq5
13664   libkonq5-templates
13665   libnetpbm10
13666   libplasma-ruby
13667   libplasma-ruby1.8
13668   libqt4-ruby1.8
13669   marble-data
13670   marble-plugins
13671   netpbm
13672   nuvola-icon-theme
13673   plasma-dataengines-workspace
13674   plasma-desktop
13675   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
13676   plasma-runners-addons
13677   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
13678   plasma-scriptengine-python
13679   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
13680   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
13681   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
13682   plasma-scriptengines
13683   plasma-wallpapers-addons
13684   plasma-widget-folderview
13685   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13686   ruby
13687   sweeper
13688   update-notifier-kde
13689   xscreensaver-data-extra
13690   xscreensaver-gl
13691   xscreensaver-gl-extra
13692   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13693 </p></blockquote>
13694
13695 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13696
13697 <blockquote><p>
13698   ark
13699   google-gadgets-common
13700   google-gadgets-qt
13701   htdig
13702   kate
13703   kdebase-bin
13704   kdebase-data
13705   kdepasswd
13706   kfind
13707   klipper
13708   konq-plugins
13709   konqueror
13710   ksysguard
13711   ksysguardd
13712   libarchive1
13713   libcln6
13714   libeet1
13715   libeina-svn-06
13716   libggadget-1.0-0b
13717   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
13718   libgps19
13719   libkdecorations4
13720   libkephal4
13721   libkonq4
13722   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
13723   libkscreensaver5
13724   libksgrd4
13725   libksignalplotter4
13726   libkunitconversion4
13727   libkwineffects1a
13728   libmarblewidget4
13729   libntrack-qt4-1
13730   libntrack0
13731   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
13732   libplasmaclock4a
13733   libplasmagenericshell4
13734   libprocesscore4a
13735   libprocessui4a
13736   libqalculate5
13737   libqedje0a
13738   libqtruby4shared2
13739   libqzion0a
13740   libruby1.8
13741   libscim8c2a
13742   libsmokekdecore4-3
13743   libsmokekdeui4-3
13744   libsmokekfile3
13745   libsmokekhtml3
13746   libsmokekio3
13747   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
13748   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
13749   libsmokekparts3
13750   libsmokektexteditor3
13751   libsmokekutils3
13752   libsmokenepomuk3
13753   libsmokephonon3
13754   libsmokeplasma3
13755   libsmokeqtcore4-3
13756   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
13757   libsmokeqtgui4-3
13758   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
13759   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
13760   libsmokeqtscript4-3
13761   libsmokeqtsql4-3
13762   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
13763   libsmokeqttest4-3
13764   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
13765   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
13766   libsmokeqtxml4-3
13767   libsmokesolid3
13768   libsmokesoprano3
13769   libtaskmanager4a
13770   libtidy-0.99-0
13771   libweather-ion4a
13772   libxklavier16
13773   libxxf86misc1
13774   okteta
13775   oxygencursors
13776   plasma-dataengines-addons
13777   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
13778   plasma-widget-lancelot
13779   plasma-widgets-addons
13780   plasma-widgets-workspace
13781   polkit-kde-1
13782   ruby1.8
13783   systemsettings
13784   update-notifier-common
13785 </p></blockquote>
13786
13787 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
13788 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
13789 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
13790 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
13791
13792       </div>
13793       <div class="tags">
13794
13795
13796         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13797
13798
13799       </div>
13800     </div>
13801     <div class="padding"></div>
13802
13803     <div class="entry">
13804       <div class="title">
13805         <a href="https://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>
13806       </div>
13807       <div class="date">
13808         22nd November 2010
13809       </div>
13810       <div class="body">
13811         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
13812 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
13813 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
13814 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
13815 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
13816 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
13817 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
13818 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
13819 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
13820
13821 <p>I found
13822 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
13823 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
13824 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
13825 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
13826 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
13827 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
13828
13829 <pre>
13830 #!/bin/sh
13831
13832 # Based on
13833 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
13834
13835 set -e
13836 set -x
13837
13838 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
13839     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
13840     exit 1
13841 else
13842     host="$1"
13843 fi
13844
13845 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
13846     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
13847     exit 1
13848 fi
13849
13850 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
13851 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13852 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13853 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
13854
13855 img=$host.img
13856 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
13857 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
13858
13859 parted $img mklabel msdos
13860 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
13861 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
13862 parted $img set 1 boot on
13863
13864 modprobe dm-mod
13865 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
13866 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
13867
13868 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
13869 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
13870 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
13871
13872 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
13873 losetup -d /dev/loop0
13874 </pre>
13875
13876 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
13877 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
13878
13879 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
13880 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
13881 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
13882 seem to work just fine.</p>
13883
13884       </div>
13885       <div class="tags">
13886
13887
13888         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13889
13890
13891       </div>
13892     </div>
13893     <div class="padding"></div>
13894
13895     <div class="entry">
13896       <div class="title">
13897         <a href="https://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>
13898       </div>
13899       <div class="date">
13900         20th November 2010
13901       </div>
13902       <div class="body">
13903         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
13904 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13905 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
13906 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
13907
13908 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
13909 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
13910 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
13911
13912 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13913
13914 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13915
13916 <blockquote><p>
13917   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
13918   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
13919   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
13920   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
13921   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
13922   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
13923   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
13924   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
13925   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
13926   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
13927   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13928   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13929   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
13930   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
13931   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
13932   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
13933   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13934   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
13935   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13936   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
13937   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
13938   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13939   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
13940   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
13941   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
13942   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13943   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13944   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
13945   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13946   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
13947   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
13948   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
13949   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
13950   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
13951   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
13952   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
13953   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
13954   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
13955   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
13956   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
13957   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
13958   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
13959   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
13960   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
13961   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
13962   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
13963   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
13964   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
13965   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
13966   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
13967   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
13968   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
13969   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13970   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
13971   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
13972   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
13973   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
13974   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
13975   zip
13976 </p></blockquote>
13977
13978 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
13979
13980 <blockquote><p>
13981   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
13982   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
13983   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
13984   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
13985   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
13986   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
13987   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
13988   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
13989   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
13990   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
13991   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
13992   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
13993   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
13994   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
13995   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13996   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
13997   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
13998   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
13999   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
14000   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
14001   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
14002   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
14003   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14004   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
14005   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
14006   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
14007   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
14008   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
14009   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
14010 </p></blockquote>
14011
14012 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14013
14014 <blockquote><p>
14015   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14016 </p></blockquote>
14017
14018 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14019
14020 <blockquote><p>
14021 [nothing]
14022 </p></blockquote>
14023
14024 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14025
14026 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14027
14028 <blockquote><p>
14029   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
14030   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
14031   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
14032   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
14033   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
14034   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
14035   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
14036   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
14037   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
14038   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
14039   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
14040   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
14041   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
14042   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
14043   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
14044   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
14045   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
14046   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
14047   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
14048   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
14049   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
14050   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
14051   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
14052   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
14053   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
14054   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
14055   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
14056   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
14057   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
14058   ttf-sazanami-gothic
14059 </p></blockquote>
14060
14061 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14062
14063 <blockquote><p>
14064   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
14065   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
14066   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
14067   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
14068   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
14069   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
14070   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
14071   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
14072   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
14073   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
14074   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
14075   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
14076   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
14077   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
14078   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
14079   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
14080   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
14081   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
14082   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
14083   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
14084   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14085   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
14086   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
14087   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
14088   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
14089   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
14090   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
14091   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
14092   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
14093   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
14094   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
14095   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
14096   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
14097 </p></blockquote>
14098
14099 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14100
14101 <blockquote><p>
14102   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
14103   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
14104   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
14105   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
14106   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14107   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
14108   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14109 </p></blockquote>
14110
14111 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14112
14113 <blockquote><p>
14114   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
14115 </p></blockquote>
14116
14117       </div>
14118       <div class="tags">
14119
14120
14121         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14122
14123
14124       </div>
14125     </div>
14126     <div class="padding"></div>
14127
14128     <div class="entry">
14129       <div class="title">
14130         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
14131       </div>
14132       <div class="date">
14133         20th November 2010
14134       </div>
14135       <div class="body">
14136         <p>Answering
14137 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
14138 call from the Gnash project</a> for
14139 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
14140 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
14141 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
14142 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
14143 releases out more often.</p>
14144
14145 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
14146 I have considered setting up a <a
14147 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
14148 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
14149 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
14150 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
14151 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
14152 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
14153 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
14154 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
14155 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
14156 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
14157 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
14158 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
14159
14160       </div>
14161       <div class="tags">
14162
14163
14164         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14165
14166
14167       </div>
14168     </div>
14169     <div class="padding"></div>
14170
14171     <div class="entry">
14172       <div class="title">
14173         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
14174       </div>
14175       <div class="date">
14176          9th November 2010
14177       </div>
14178       <div class="body">
14179         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
14180
14181 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
14182 3D linked in from
14183 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
14184 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
14185
14186       </div>
14187       <div class="tags">
14188
14189
14190         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14191
14192
14193       </div>
14194     </div>
14195     <div class="padding"></div>
14196
14197     <div class="entry">
14198       <div class="title">
14199         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
14200       </div>
14201       <div class="date">
14202         24th October 2010
14203       </div>
14204       <div class="body">
14205         <p>Some updates.</p>
14206
14207 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
14208 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
14209 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
14210 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
14211 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
14212 :)</p>
14213
14214 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
14215 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
14216 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
14217 It is called
14218 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
14219 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
14220 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
14221 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
14222 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
14223 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
14224
14225 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
14226 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
14227 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
14228 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
14229 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
14230 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
14231 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
14232 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
14233 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
14234 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
14235
14236       </div>
14237       <div class="tags">
14238
14239
14240         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
14241
14242
14243       </div>
14244     </div>
14245     <div class="padding"></div>
14246
14247     <div class="entry">
14248       <div class="title">
14249         <a href="https://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>
14250       </div>
14251       <div class="date">
14252          4th September 2010
14253       </div>
14254       <div class="body">
14255         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
14256 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
14257 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
14258 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
14259 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
14260 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
14261 installed.</p>
14262
14263 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
14264 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
14265 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
14266 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
14267 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14268 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
14269 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
14270 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
14271 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
14272
14273 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
14274 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
14275 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
14276 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
14277 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
14278 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
14279 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
14280 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
14281 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
14282 pages they want to visit.</p>
14283
14284 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
14285 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
14286 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
14287 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
14288 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
14289 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
14290 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
14291 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
14292 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
14293 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
14294 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
14295
14296       </div>
14297       <div class="tags">
14298
14299
14300         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14301
14302
14303       </div>
14304     </div>
14305     <div class="padding"></div>
14306
14307     <div class="entry">
14308       <div class="title">
14309         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
14310       </div>
14311       <div class="date">
14312         27th July 2010
14313       </div>
14314       <div class="body">
14315         <p>I discovered this while doing
14316 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
14317 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
14318 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
14319 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
14320 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
14321
14322 <p>An example is from todays
14323 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
14324 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
14325 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
14326 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
14327 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
14328 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
14329 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
14330
14331 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
14332
14333 <blockquote><pre>
14334 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
14335  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
14336   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
14337 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
14338  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
14339 </pre></blockquote>
14340
14341 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
14342 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
14343 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
14344 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
14345 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
14346 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
14347 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
14348 of dependency loops.</p>
14349
14350 <p>Thanks to
14351 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
14352 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
14353 dependencies
14354 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
14355 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
14356
14357 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
14358 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
14359 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
14360 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
14361 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
14362 it.</p>
14363
14364       </div>
14365       <div class="tags">
14366
14367
14368         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14369
14370
14371       </div>
14372     </div>
14373     <div class="padding"></div>
14374
14375     <div class="entry">
14376       <div class="title">
14377         <a href="https://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>
14378       </div>
14379       <div class="date">
14380         17th July 2010
14381       </div>
14382       <div class="body">
14383         <p>This is a
14384 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
14385 on my
14386 <a href="https://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
14387 work</a> on
14388 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
14389 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
14390
14391 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
14392 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
14393 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
14394 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
14395
14396 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
14397 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
14398 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
14399
14400 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
14401
14402 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
14403 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
14404 the web.
14405
14406 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
14407 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
14408 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
14409 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
14410 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
14411 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
14412
14413 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
14414 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
14415 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
14416 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
14417 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
14418 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
14419 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
14420 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
14421 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
14422 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
14423 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
14424 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
14425 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
14426 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
14427 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
14428 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
14429
14430 <blockquote><pre>
14431 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14432   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14433   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14434   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14435   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14436   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14437   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14438
14439 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14440   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14441   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
14442   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
14443   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
14444   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
14445 </pre></blockquote>
14446
14447 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
14448 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
14449 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
14450 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14451 also exist.</p>
14452
14453 <blockquote><pre>
14454 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14455 objectclass: top
14456 objectclass: dnsdomain
14457 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14458 dc: tjener
14459 arecord: 10.0.2.2
14460 associateddomain: tjener.intern
14461
14462 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14463 objectclass: top
14464 objectclass: dnsdomain2
14465 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14466 dc: 2
14467 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
14468 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
14469 </pre></blockquote>
14470
14471 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
14472 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
14473 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
14474 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
14475 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
14476 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
14477 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
14478 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
14479 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
14480 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
14481 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
14482 instead.</p>
14483
14484 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
14485 like this:</p>
14486
14487 <blockquote><pre>
14488 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14489   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14490   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14491   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14492   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14493   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14494
14495 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14496   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
14497 </pre></blockquote>
14498
14499 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
14500 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
14501 reverse lookups.</p>
14502
14503 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
14504 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
14505 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
14506 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
14507
14508 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
14509 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
14510 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
14511
14512 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
14513 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
14514 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
14515 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
14516 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
14517
14518 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
14519 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
14520 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
14521 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
14522 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
14523
14524 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
14525 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
14526 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
14527 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
14528 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
14529 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
14530
14531 <blockquote><pre>
14532 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
14533     SUP top
14534     AUXILIARY
14535     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
14536           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
14537           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
14538           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
14539           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
14540     ))
14541 </pre></blockquote>
14542
14543 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
14544 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
14545 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
14546 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
14547 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
14548 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
14549
14550 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
14551
14552 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
14553 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
14554 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
14555 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
14556 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
14557
14558 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
14559 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
14560 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
14561 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
14562
14563 <blockquote><pre>
14564 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
14565 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
14566 </pre></blockquote>
14567
14568 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
14569 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
14570 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
14571 search result is this entry:</p>
14572
14573 <blockquote><pre>
14574 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14575 cn: dhcp
14576 objectClass: top
14577 objectClass: dhcpServer
14578 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14579 </pre></blockquote>
14580
14581 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
14582 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
14583 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
14584 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
14585 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
14586 The search result is this entry:</p>
14587
14588 <blockquote><pre>
14589 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14590 cn: DHCP Config
14591 objectClass: top
14592 objectClass: dhcpService
14593 objectClass: dhcpOptions
14594 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14595 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
14596 dhcpStatements: authoritative
14597 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
14598 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
14599 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
14600 </pre></blockquote>
14601
14602 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
14603 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
14604 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
14605 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
14606 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
14607 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
14608 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
14609 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
14610 related computer objects.</p>
14611
14612 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
14613 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
14614 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
14615 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
14616 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
14617 like:</p>
14618
14619 <blockquote><pre>
14620 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14621 cn: hostname
14622 objectClass: top
14623 objectClass: dhcpHost
14624 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14625 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
14626 </pre></blockquote>
14627
14628 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
14629 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
14630 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
14631 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
14632 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
14633 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
14634 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
14635 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
14636 structural object class.
14637
14638 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
14639
14640 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
14641 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
14642 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
14643 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
14644 in the configuration.</p>
14645
14646 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
14647 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
14648 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
14649 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
14650 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
14651 structure.</p>
14652
14653 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
14654 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
14655
14656 <blockquote><pre>
14657 ou=services
14658   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
14659     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
14660     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
14661       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
14662         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
14663     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
14664       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
14665         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
14666     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
14667       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
14668 </pre></blockquote>
14669
14670 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
14671 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
14672 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
14673 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
14674
14675 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
14676 like this:</p>
14677
14678 <blockquote><pre>
14679 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14680 dc: hostname
14681 objectClass: top
14682 objectClass: dhcpHost
14683 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14684 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
14685 associateddomain: hostname.intern
14686 arecord: 10.11.12.13
14687 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14688 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
14689 </pre></blockquote>
14690
14691 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
14692 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
14693 auxiliary object class.</p>
14694
14695       </div>
14696       <div class="tags">
14697
14698
14699         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14700
14701
14702       </div>
14703     </div>
14704     <div class="padding"></div>
14705
14706     <div class="entry">
14707       <div class="title">
14708         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
14709       </div>
14710       <div class="date">
14711         14th July 2010
14712       </div>
14713       <div class="body">
14714         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
14715 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
14716 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
14717 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
14718 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
14719
14720 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
14721 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
14722
14723 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
14724 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
14725 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
14726 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
14727 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
14728 to a slave DNS server.</p>
14729
14730 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
14731 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
14732 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
14733 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
14734 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
14735 seem to work.</p>
14736
14737 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
14738 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
14739 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
14740 this:</p>
14741
14742 <blockquote><pre>
14743   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14744   cn: hostname
14745   objectClass: dhcphost
14746   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14747   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
14748   associateddomain: hostname.intern
14749   arecord: 10.11.12.13
14750   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14751   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
14752   ldapconfigsound: Y
14753 </pre></blockquote>
14754
14755 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
14756 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
14757 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
14758 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
14759
14760 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
14761 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
14762 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
14763 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
14764 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
14765 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
14766 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
14767 might be a good place to put it.</p>
14768
14769 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14770 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14771
14772       </div>
14773       <div class="tags">
14774
14775
14776         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14777
14778
14779       </div>
14780     </div>
14781     <div class="padding"></div>
14782
14783     <div class="entry">
14784       <div class="title">
14785         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
14786       </div>
14787       <div class="date">
14788         11th July 2010
14789       </div>
14790       <div class="body">
14791         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
14792 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
14793 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
14794 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
14795
14796 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
14797 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
14798 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
14799 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
14800 LTSP clients.</p>
14801
14802 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
14803 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
14804 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
14805
14806 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
14807 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
14808 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
14809
14810 <blockquote><pre>
14811 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
14812 #
14813 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
14814 #
14815 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
14816 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
14817 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
14818 #
14819 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
14820 # existence of attribute names.
14821 #
14822 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
14823 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
14824 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
14825 #
14826 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
14827 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
14828 #
14829 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
14830 #     SUP top
14831 #     AUXILIARY
14832 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
14833
14834 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
14835 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
14836     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
14837     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
14838         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
14839         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
14840             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
14841             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
14842             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
14843             # bass value on to clients
14844             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
14845         done
14846     done
14847 fi
14848 </pre></blockquote>
14849
14850 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
14851 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
14852 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
14853 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
14854 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
14855
14856 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14857 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14858
14859 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
14860 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
14861 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
14862 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
14863 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
14864 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
14865
14866       </div>
14867       <div class="tags">
14868
14869
14870         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14871
14872
14873       </div>
14874     </div>
14875     <div class="padding"></div>
14876
14877     <div class="entry">
14878       <div class="title">
14879         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
14880       </div>
14881       <div class="date">
14882          9th July 2010
14883       </div>
14884       <div class="body">
14885         <p>Since
14886 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
14887 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
14888 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
14889 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
14890 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
14891 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
14892 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
14893 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
14894 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
14895 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
14896 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
14897 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
14898 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
14899
14900       </div>
14901       <div class="tags">
14902
14903
14904         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14905
14906
14907       </div>
14908     </div>
14909     <div class="padding"></div>
14910
14911     <div class="entry">
14912       <div class="title">
14913         <a href="https://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>
14914       </div>
14915       <div class="date">
14916          3rd July 2010
14917       </div>
14918       <div class="body">
14919         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
14920 href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
14921 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
14922 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
14923 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
14924 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
14925 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
14926 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
14927
14928 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
14929 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
14930 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
14931 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
14932 publish the difference.</p>
14933
14934 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14935
14936 <blockquote><p>
14937   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14938   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
14939   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
14940   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14941   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
14942   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
14943   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
14944   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
14945 </p></blockquote>
14946
14947 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14948
14949 <blockquote><p>
14950   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
14951   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
14952   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
14953   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
14954   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
14955   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
14956   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14957   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14958   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14959   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
14960   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
14961   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
14962   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
14963   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
14964   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
14965   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14966   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
14967   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
14968   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
14969   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
14970 </p></blockquote>
14971
14972 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14973
14974 <blockquote><p>
14975   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
14976   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
14977   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
14978   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
14979   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
14980   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
14981   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
14982   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
14983   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
14984   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
14985   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
14986   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
14987   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
14988   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
14989   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
14990   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
14991   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
14992   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
14993   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
14994   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
14995   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
14996 </p></blockquote>
14997
14998 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14999
15000 <blockquote><p>
15001   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
15002   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
15003   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
15004 </p></blockquote>
15005
15006 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
15007 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
15008 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
15009 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
15010 the difference somewhat.
15011
15012       </div>
15013       <div class="tags">
15014
15015
15016         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15017
15018
15019       </div>
15020     </div>
15021     <div class="padding"></div>
15022
15023     <div class="entry">
15024       <div class="title">
15025         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
15026       </div>
15027       <div class="date">
15028         28th June 2010
15029       </div>
15030       <div class="body">
15031         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
15032 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
15033 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
15034 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
15035 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
15036 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
15037 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
15038 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
15039 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
15040 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
15041
15042 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
15043 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
15044 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
15045 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
15046 released.</p>
15047
15048 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
15049 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
15050 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
15051 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
15052
15053 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
15054 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15055
15056 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
15057 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
15058 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
15059 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
15060 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
15061
15062       </div>
15063       <div class="tags">
15064
15065
15066         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15067
15068
15069       </div>
15070     </div>
15071     <div class="padding"></div>
15072
15073     <div class="entry">
15074       <div class="title">
15075         <a href="https://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>
15076       </div>
15077       <div class="date">
15078         24th June 2010
15079       </div>
15080       <div class="body">
15081         <p>A while back, I
15082 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
15083 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
15084 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
15085 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
15086
15087 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
15088 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
15089 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
15090 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
15091
15092 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
15093 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
15094 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
15095 Debian Edu.</p>
15096
15097 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
15098 the
15099 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
15100 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
15101 available today from IETF.</p>
15102
15103 <pre>
15104 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
15105 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
15106 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
15107  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
15108         NAME 'dhcpHost'
15109         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
15110 -       SUP top
15111 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
15112         MUST cn
15113         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
15114         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
15115 </pre>
15116
15117 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
15118 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
15119 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
15120
15121 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15122 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15123
15124       </div>
15125       <div class="tags">
15126
15127
15128         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15129
15130
15131       </div>
15132     </div>
15133     <div class="padding"></div>
15134
15135     <div class="entry">
15136       <div class="title">
15137         <a href="https://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>
15138       </div>
15139       <div class="date">
15140         16th June 2010
15141       </div>
15142       <div class="body">
15143         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
15144 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
15145 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
15146 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
15147 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
15148 this:
15149
15150 <blockquote><pre>
15151 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15152 tasksel --new-install
15153 </pre></blockquote>
15154
15155 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
15156 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
15157 any output what so ever.
15158
15159 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
15160 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
15161 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
15162 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
15163 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
15164 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
15165 code like this:
15166
15167 <blockquote><pre>
15168 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15169 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
15170 $cmd
15171 </pre></blockquote>
15172
15173 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
15174 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
15175 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
15176 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
15177 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
15178 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
15179 installation.</p>
15180
15181 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
15182 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
15183 like this.</p>
15184
15185       </div>
15186       <div class="tags">
15187
15188
15189         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15190
15191
15192       </div>
15193     </div>
15194     <div class="padding"></div>
15195
15196     <div class="entry">
15197       <div class="title">
15198         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
15199       </div>
15200       <div class="date">
15201         13th June 2010
15202       </div>
15203       <div class="body">
15204         <p>My
15205 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
15206 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
15207 finally made the upgrade logs available from
15208 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
15209 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
15210 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
15211 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
15212
15213 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
15214 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
15215 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
15216 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
15217 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
15218 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
15219 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
15220 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
15221
15222 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
15223 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
15224 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
15225 too surprising.</p>
15226
15227 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
15228 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
15229 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
15230 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
15231 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
15232 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
15233 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
15234 continue.</p>
15235
15236 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
15237 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
15238   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
15239   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
15240   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
15241   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
15242   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
15243   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15244   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15245   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15246   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15247   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15248   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15249   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15250   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15251   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15252   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15253   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15254   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15255   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15256   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15257   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15258   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15259   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15260   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15261   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15262   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15263   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15264   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
15265   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
15266
15267 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
15268
15269 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
15270   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
15271   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
15272   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
15273   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15274   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
15275   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
15276   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
15277   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
15278   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
15279   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15280   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
15281   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
15282   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
15283   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
15284   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
15285   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
15286   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
15287   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
15288   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
15289   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
15290   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
15291   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
15292   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
15293   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15294   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
15295   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
15296   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
15297   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
15298   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15299   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15300   zip</p>
15301
15302 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
15303
15304 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
15305   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
15306   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
15307   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
15308   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
15309   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
15310   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15311   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15312   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15313   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15314   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15315   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15316   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15317   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15318   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15319   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15320   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15321   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15322   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15323   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15324   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15325   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15326   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15327   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15328   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15329   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15330   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15331   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
15332
15333 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
15334 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
15335   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
15336   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
15337   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
15338   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
15339   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
15340   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
15341   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
15342   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
15343   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
15344   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
15345   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
15346   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
15347   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
15348   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
15349   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
15350   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
15351   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
15352   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15353   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
15354   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
15355   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
15356   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
15357   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
15358   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
15359   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
15360   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
15361   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
15362   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
15363   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
15364   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
15365   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
15366   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
15367   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
15368   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15369   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15370   xulrunner-1.9</p>
15371
15372
15373       </div>
15374       <div class="tags">
15375
15376
15377         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15378
15379
15380       </div>
15381     </div>
15382     <div class="padding"></div>
15383
15384     <div class="entry">
15385       <div class="title">
15386         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
15387       </div>
15388       <div class="date">
15389         11th June 2010
15390       </div>
15391       <div class="body">
15392         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
15393 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
15394 have been discovered and reported in the process
15395 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
15396 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
15397 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
15398 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
15399 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
15400
15401 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
15402 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
15403 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
15404 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
15405 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
15406 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
15407
15408 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
15409 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
15410 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
15411 is created.  The bug report
15412 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
15413 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
15414 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
15415 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
15416 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
15417 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
15418 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
15419 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
15420 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
15421 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
15422 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
15423 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
15424 Debian Squeeze.</p>
15425
15426 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
15427 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
15428 trick:</p>
15429
15430 <blockquote><pre>
15431 #!/bin/sh
15432 set -ex
15433
15434 if [ "$1" ] ; then
15435     desktop=$1
15436 else
15437     desktop=gnome
15438 fi
15439
15440 from=lenny
15441 to=squeeze
15442
15443 exec &lt; /dev/null
15444 unset LANG
15445 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
15446 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
15447 fuser -mv .
15448 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
15449 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
15450 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
15451 #!/bin/sh
15452 exit 101
15453 EOF
15454 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
15455 exit_cleanup() {
15456     umount $tmpdir/proc
15457 }
15458 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
15459 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
15460 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
15461
15462 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
15463
15464 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
15465 # to return the correct answers.
15466 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
15467     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
15468
15469 # Include the desktop and laptop task
15470 for test in desktop laptop ; do
15471     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
15472 #!/bin/sh
15473 exit 2
15474 EOF
15475     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
15476 done
15477
15478 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15479 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
15480 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
15481 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
15482
15483 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
15484 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
15485 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
15486 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
15487 fuser -mv
15488 </pre></blockquote>
15489
15490 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
15491 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
15492 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
15493 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
15494 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
15495 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
15496
15497 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
15498 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
15499 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
15500 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
15501 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
15502 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
15503 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
15504
15505 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
15506 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
15507 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
15508 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
15509 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
15510 packages.</p>
15511
15512       </div>
15513       <div class="tags">
15514
15515
15516         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15517
15518
15519       </div>
15520     </div>
15521     <div class="padding"></div>
15522
15523     <div class="entry">
15524       <div class="title">
15525         <a href="https://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>
15526       </div>
15527       <div class="date">
15528          6th June 2010
15529       </div>
15530       <div class="body">
15531         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
15532 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
15533 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
15534 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
15535 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
15536 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
15537 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
15538
15539 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
15540 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
15541 COLUMNS):</p>
15542
15543 <blockquote><pre>
15544 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
15545 previous=N
15546 PREVLEVEL=
15547 RUNLEVEL=
15548 runlevel=S
15549 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
15550 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
15551 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
15552 </pre></blockquote>
15553
15554 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
15555 script.</p>
15556
15557 <blockquote><pre>
15558 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
15559 previous=N
15560 PREVLEVEL=N
15561 RUNLEVEL=S
15562 runlevel=S
15563 </pre></blockquote>
15564
15565 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
15566 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
15567 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
15568
15569 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
15570 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
15571 choice.</p>
15572
15573       </div>
15574       <div class="tags">
15575
15576
15577         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15578
15579
15580       </div>
15581     </div>
15582     <div class="padding"></div>
15583
15584     <div class="entry">
15585       <div class="title">
15586         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
15587       </div>
15588       <div class="date">
15589          6th June 2010
15590       </div>
15591       <div class="body">
15592         <p>Via the
15593 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
15594 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
15595 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
15596 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
15597 following the standards wars of today.</p>
15598
15599       </div>
15600       <div class="tags">
15601
15602
15603         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15604
15605
15606       </div>
15607     </div>
15608     <div class="padding"></div>
15609
15610     <div class="entry">
15611       <div class="title">
15612         <a href="https://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>
15613       </div>
15614       <div class="date">
15615          3rd June 2010
15616       </div>
15617       <div class="body">
15618         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
15619 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
15620 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
15621 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
15622 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
15623
15624 <blockquote><pre>
15625 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
15626   vendor                    count
15627   Dell Computer Corporation     1
15628     PowerEdge 1750              1
15629   IBM                           1
15630     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
15631   Intel                         2
15632   [no-dmi-info]                 3
15633 maintainer:~#
15634 </pre></blockquote>
15635
15636 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
15637 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
15638 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
15639 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
15640 option to list the individual machines.</p>
15641
15642 <p>A larger list is
15643 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
15644 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
15645 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
15646 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
15647 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
15648 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
15649 collector.</p>
15650
15651       </div>
15652       <div class="tags">
15653
15654
15655         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
15656
15657
15658       </div>
15659     </div>
15660     <div class="padding"></div>
15661
15662     <div class="entry">
15663       <div class="title">
15664         <a href="https://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>
15665       </div>
15666       <div class="date">
15667          1st June 2010
15668       </div>
15669       <div class="body">
15670         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
15671 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
15672 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
15673 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
15674 wait.</p>
15675
15676 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
15677 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
15678 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
15679 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
15680 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
15681 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
15682
15683 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
15684 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
15685 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
15686 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
15687 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
15688 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
15689 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
15690 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
15691
15692 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
15693
15694       </div>
15695       <div class="tags">
15696
15697
15698         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15699
15700
15701       </div>
15702     </div>
15703     <div class="padding"></div>
15704
15705     <div class="entry">
15706       <div class="title">
15707         <a href="https://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>
15708       </div>
15709       <div class="date">
15710         27th May 2010
15711       </div>
15712       <div class="body">
15713         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
15714 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
15715 issues are known and should be solved:
15716
15717 <p><ul>
15718
15719 <li>The wicd package seen to
15720 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
15721 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
15722 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
15723 seem to be on the case.</li>
15724
15725 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
15726 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
15727 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
15728 maintainer is on the case.</li>
15729
15730 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
15731 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
15732 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
15733 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
15734 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
15735 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
15736 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
15737 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
15738
15739 </ul></p>
15740
15741 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
15742 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
15743 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
15744 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
15745
15746 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
15747 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
15748 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
15749 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
15750
15751 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
15752
15753       </div>
15754       <div class="tags">
15755
15756
15757         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15758
15759
15760       </div>
15761     </div>
15762     <div class="padding"></div>
15763
15764     <div class="entry">
15765       <div class="title">
15766         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
15767       </div>
15768       <div class="date">
15769         22nd May 2010
15770       </div>
15771       <div class="body">
15772         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
15773 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
15774 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
15775 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
15776
15777 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
15778 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
15779 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
15780 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
15781 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
15782 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
15783 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
15784 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
15785 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
15786 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
15787 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
15788 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
15789 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
15790 going to work.</p>
15791
15792 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
15793 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
15794 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
15795 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
15796 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
15797 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
15798 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
15799 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
15800 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
15801 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
15802 Edu.</p>
15803
15804 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
15805 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
15806 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
15807 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
15808 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
15809 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
15810
15811 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
15812 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
15813
15814       </div>
15815       <div class="tags">
15816
15817
15818         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15819
15820
15821       </div>
15822     </div>
15823     <div class="padding"></div>
15824
15825     <div class="entry">
15826       <div class="title">
15827         <a href="https://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>
15828       </div>
15829       <div class="date">
15830         14th May 2010
15831       </div>
15832       <div class="body">
15833         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
15834 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
15835 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
15836 expected, if I am to believe the
15837 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
15838 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
15839 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
15840 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
15841 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
15842 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
15843 version.</p>
15844
15845 More information about
15846 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
15847 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
15848 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
15849 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
15850
15851 <blockquote><pre>
15852 CONCURRENCY=none
15853 </pre></blockquote>
15854
15855 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
15856 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
15857 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
15858 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
15859
15860       </div>
15861       <div class="tags">
15862
15863
15864         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15865
15866
15867       </div>
15868     </div>
15869     <div class="padding"></div>
15870
15871     <div class="entry">
15872       <div class="title">
15873         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
15874       </div>
15875       <div class="date">
15876         14th May 2010
15877       </div>
15878       <div class="body">
15879         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
15880 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
15881 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
15882 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
15883 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
15884 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
15885 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
15886 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
15887
15888 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
15889 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
15890 this on the collector host:</p>
15891
15892 <blockquote><pre>
15893 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
15894 </pre></blockquote>
15895
15896 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
15897 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
15898
15899 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
15900 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
15901 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
15902 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
15903 written yet.</p>
15904
15905       </div>
15906       <div class="tags">
15907
15908
15909         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
15910
15911
15912       </div>
15913     </div>
15914     <div class="padding"></div>
15915
15916     <div class="entry">
15917       <div class="title">
15918         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
15919       </div>
15920       <div class="date">
15921         13th May 2010
15922       </div>
15923       <div class="body">
15924         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
15925 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
15926 has been
15927 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
15928
15929 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
15930 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
15931 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
15932 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
15933 based boot system.  Tollef is
15934 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
15935 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
15936 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
15937 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
15938 at the moment do not.</p>
15939
15940 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
15941 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
15942 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
15943 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
15944 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
15945 way forward.</p>
15946
15947 <p>In the mean time, based on the
15948 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
15949 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
15950 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
15951 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
15952 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
15953 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
15954 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
15955 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
15956
15957       </div>
15958       <div class="tags">
15959
15960
15961         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15962
15963
15964       </div>
15965     </div>
15966     <div class="padding"></div>
15967
15968     <div class="entry">
15969       <div class="title">
15970         <a href="https://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>
15971       </div>
15972       <div class="date">
15973          6th May 2010
15974       </div>
15975       <div class="body">
15976         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
15977 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
15978 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
15979 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
15980 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
15981 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
15982 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
15983
15984 <blockquote><pre>
15985 CONCURRENCY=makefile
15986 </pre></blockquote>
15987
15988 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
15989 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
15990 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
15991 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
15992 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
15993 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
15994 make this happen.</p>
15995
15996 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
15997 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
15998 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
15999 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
16000 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
16001
16002 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
16003 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
16004 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
16005 fix the remaining issues.</p>
16006
16007 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16008 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16009 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16010 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16011
16012       </div>
16013       <div class="tags">
16014
16015
16016         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16017
16018
16019       </div>
16020     </div>
16021     <div class="padding"></div>
16022
16023     <div class="entry">
16024       <div class="title">
16025         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
16026       </div>
16027       <div class="date">
16028         27th July 2009
16029       </div>
16030       <div class="body">
16031         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
16032 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
16033 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
16034 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
16035 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
16036 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
16037 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
16038
16039 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
16040 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
16041 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
16042
16043       </div>
16044       <div class="tags">
16045
16046
16047         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16048
16049
16050       </div>
16051     </div>
16052     <div class="padding"></div>
16053
16054     <div class="entry">
16055       <div class="title">
16056         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
16057       </div>
16058       <div class="date">
16059         22nd July 2009
16060       </div>
16061       <div class="body">
16062         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
16063 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
16064 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
16065 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
16066 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
16067 the package up to date.</p>
16068
16069 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
16070 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
16071 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
16072 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
16073 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
16074 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
16075 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
16076 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
16077 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
16078 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
16079 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
16080 working on the future release.</p>
16081
16082 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
16083 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
16084
16085       </div>
16086       <div class="tags">
16087
16088
16089         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16090
16091
16092       </div>
16093     </div>
16094     <div class="padding"></div>
16095
16096     <div class="entry">
16097       <div class="title">
16098         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
16099       </div>
16100       <div class="date">
16101         24th June 2009
16102       </div>
16103       <div class="body">
16104         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
16105 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
16106 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
16107 funded
16108 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
16109 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
16110 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
16111 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
16112 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
16113 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
16114
16115 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
16116 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
16117 boot:</p>
16118
16119 <ul>
16120
16121 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
16122
16123 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
16124    clock is in UTC.</li>
16125
16126 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
16127    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16128    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
16129
16130 </ul>
16131
16132 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
16133 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
16134 Villegas</a>.
16135
16136 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
16137 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
16138 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
16139 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
16140 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
16141 using this.</p>
16142
16143 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
16144 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
16145 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
16146 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
16147 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
16148 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
16149 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
16150
16151       </div>
16152       <div class="tags">
16153
16154
16155         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16156
16157
16158       </div>
16159     </div>
16160     <div class="padding"></div>
16161
16162     <div class="entry">
16163       <div class="title">
16164         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
16165       </div>
16166       <div class="date">
16167         17th May 2009
16168       </div>
16169       <div class="body">
16170         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
16171 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
16172 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
16173 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
16174 dager siden kom
16175 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
16176 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
16177 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
16178 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
16179 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
16180
16181 <blockquote>
16182 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
16183 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
16184 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
16185 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
16186 </blockquote>
16187
16188 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
16189 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
16190 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
16191 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
16192 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
16193
16194 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
16195 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
16196 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
16197
16198       </div>
16199       <div class="tags">
16200
16201
16202         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
16203
16204
16205       </div>
16206     </div>
16207     <div class="padding"></div>
16208
16209     <div class="entry">
16210       <div class="title">
16211         <a href="https://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>
16212       </div>
16213       <div class="date">
16214          7th May 2009
16215       </div>
16216       <div class="body">
16217         <p>Kom over
16218 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
16219 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
16220 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
16221 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
16222 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
16223 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
16224 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
16225
16226       </div>
16227       <div class="tags">
16228
16229
16230         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16231
16232
16233       </div>
16234     </div>
16235     <div class="padding"></div>
16236
16237     <div class="entry">
16238       <div class="title">
16239         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
16240       </div>
16241       <div class="date">
16242          2nd May 2009
16243       </div>
16244       <div class="body">
16245         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
16246 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
16247 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
16248 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
16249 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
16250 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
16251 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
16252 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
16253 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
16254 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
16255 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
16256 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
16257 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
16258 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
16259 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
16260 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
16261 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
16262 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
16263 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
16264 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
16265
16266 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
16267 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
16268 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
16269 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
16270 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
16271 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
16272 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
16273 betydelige.</p>
16274
16275       </div>
16276       <div class="tags">
16277
16278
16279         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16280
16281
16282       </div>
16283     </div>
16284     <div class="padding"></div>
16285
16286     <div class="entry">
16287       <div class="title">
16288         <a href="https://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>
16289       </div>
16290       <div class="date">
16291          2nd May 2009
16292       </div>
16293       <div class="body">
16294         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
16295 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
16296 do not yet know them.</p>
16297
16298 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
16299 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
16300 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
16301 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
16302 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
16303 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
16304 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
16305 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
16306 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
16307 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
16308 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
16309
16310 <p>The second one is
16311 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
16312 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
16313 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
16314 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
16315 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
16316 and the company behind it is running
16317 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
16318 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
16319 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
16320 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
16321 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
16322 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
16323 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
16324 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
16325
16326 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
16327 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
16328 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
16329 surrounded by today.</p>
16330
16331       </div>
16332       <div class="tags">
16333
16334
16335         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16336
16337
16338       </div>
16339     </div>
16340     <div class="padding"></div>
16341
16342     <div class="entry">
16343       <div class="title">
16344         <a href="https://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>
16345       </div>
16346       <div class="date">
16347         28th April 2009
16348       </div>
16349       <div class="body">
16350         <p>Julien Blache
16351 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
16352 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
16353 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
16354 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
16355 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
16356 properties.</p>
16357
16358       </div>
16359       <div class="tags">
16360
16361
16362         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16363
16364
16365       </div>
16366     </div>
16367     <div class="padding"></div>
16368
16369     <div class="entry">
16370       <div class="title">
16371         <a href="https://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>
16372       </div>
16373       <div class="date">
16374         30th March 2009
16375       </div>
16376       <div class="body">
16377         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
16378 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
16379 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
16380 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
16381 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
16382 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
16383 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
16384 application.</p>
16385
16386 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
16387 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
16388 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
16389 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
16390 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
16391 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
16392 blocked from doing so.</p>
16393
16394 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
16395 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
16396 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
16397 requirements change.</p>
16398
16399 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
16400 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
16401 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
16402
16403       </div>
16404       <div class="tags">
16405
16406
16407         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
16408
16409
16410       </div>
16411     </div>
16412     <div class="padding"></div>
16413
16414     <div class="entry">
16415       <div class="title">
16416         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
16417       </div>
16418       <div class="date">
16419         29th March 2009
16420       </div>
16421       <div class="body">
16422         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
16423 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
16424 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
16425 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
16426 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
16427 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
16428 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
16429 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
16430 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
16431 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
16432 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
16433 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
16434 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
16435 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
16436 now. :)</p>
16437
16438       </div>
16439       <div class="tags">
16440
16441
16442         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16443
16444
16445       </div>
16446     </div>
16447     <div class="padding"></div>
16448
16449     <div class="entry">
16450       <div class="title">
16451         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
16452       </div>
16453       <div class="date">
16454         29th March 2009
16455       </div>
16456       <div class="body">
16457         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
16458 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
16459 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
16460 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
16461 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
16462 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
16463
16464 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
16465 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
16466 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
16467 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
16468 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
16469 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
16470 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
16471 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
16472 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
16473 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
16474 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
16475 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
16476 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
16477
16478 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
16479 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
16480 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
16481 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
16482
16483 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
16484 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
16485
16486 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
16487 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
16488 new IETF work group?</p>
16489
16490       </div>
16491       <div class="tags">
16492
16493
16494         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16495
16496
16497       </div>
16498     </div>
16499     <div class="padding"></div>
16500
16501     <div class="entry">
16502       <div class="title">
16503         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
16504       </div>
16505       <div class="date">
16506         15th February 2009
16507       </div>
16508       <div class="body">
16509         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
16510 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
16511 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
16512 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
16513 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
16514 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
16515 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
16516 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
16517 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
16518 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
16519 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
16520 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
16521
16522       </div>
16523       <div class="tags">
16524
16525
16526         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
16527
16528
16529       </div>
16530     </div>
16531     <div class="padding"></div>
16532
16533     <div class="entry">
16534       <div class="title">
16535         <a href="https://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>
16536       </div>
16537       <div class="date">
16538          7th December 2008
16539       </div>
16540       <div class="body">
16541         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
16542 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
16543 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
16544 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
16545 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
16546 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
16547 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
16548 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
16549
16550 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
16551 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
16552 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
16553 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
16554 of these cards.</p>
16555
16556       </div>
16557       <div class="tags">
16558
16559
16560         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
16561
16562
16563       </div>
16564     </div>
16565     <div class="padding"></div>
16566
16567     <div class="entry">
16568       <div class="title">
16569         <a href="https://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>
16570       </div>
16571       <div class="date">
16572         25th November 2008
16573       </div>
16574       <div class="body">
16575         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
16576 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
16577 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
16578 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
16579 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
16580 notes are available on
16581 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
16582 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
16583 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
16584 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
16585 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
16586 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
16587 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
16588 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
16589 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
16590
16591 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
16592 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
16593
16594       </div>
16595       <div class="tags">
16596
16597
16598         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16599
16600
16601       </div>
16602     </div>
16603     <div class="padding"></div>
16604
16605     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
16606     <div id="sidebar">
16607
16608
16609
16610 <h2>Archive</h2>
16611 <ul>
16612
16613 <li>2024
16614 <ul>
16615
16616 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2024/01/">January (1)</a></li>
16617
16618 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2024/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16619
16620 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2024/03/">March (2)</a></li>
16621
16622 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2024/04/">April (3)</a></li>
16623
16624 </ul></li>
16625
16626 <li>2023
16627 <ul>
16628
16629 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/01/">January (3)</a></li>
16630
16631 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16632
16633 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/04/">April (2)</a></li>
16634
16635 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/05/">May (3)</a></li>
16636
16637 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/06/">June (1)</a></li>
16638
16639 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/08/">August (1)</a></li>
16640
16641 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16642
16643 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/10/">October (1)</a></li>
16644
16645 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/11/">November (4)</a></li>
16646
16647 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/12/">December (1)</a></li>
16648
16649 </ul></li>
16650
16651 <li>2022
16652 <ul>
16653
16654 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16655
16656 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/03/">March (3)</a></li>
16657
16658 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/04/">April (2)</a></li>
16659
16660 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16661
16662 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/07/">July (1)</a></li>
16663
16664 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16665
16666 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/10/">October (1)</a></li>
16667
16668 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/12/">December (1)</a></li>
16669
16670 </ul></li>
16671
16672 <li>2021
16673 <ul>
16674
16675 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/01/">January (2)</a></li>
16676
16677 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16678
16679 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/05/">May (1)</a></li>
16680
16681 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/06/">June (1)</a></li>
16682
16683 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/07/">July (3)</a></li>
16684
16685 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/08/">August (1)</a></li>
16686
16687 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16688
16689 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/10/">October (1)</a></li>
16690
16691 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/12/">December (1)</a></li>
16692
16693 </ul></li>
16694
16695 <li>2020
16696 <ul>
16697
16698 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/02/">February (2)</a></li>
16699
16700 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/03/">March (2)</a></li>
16701
16702 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/04/">April (2)</a></li>
16703
16704 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/05/">May (3)</a></li>
16705
16706 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16707
16708 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/07/">July (1)</a></li>
16709
16710 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16711
16712 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/10/">October (1)</a></li>
16713
16714 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/11/">November (1)</a></li>
16715
16716 </ul></li>
16717
16718 <li>2019
16719 <ul>
16720
16721 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/01/">January (4)</a></li>
16722
16723 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/02/">February (3)</a></li>
16724
16725 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/03/">March (3)</a></li>
16726
16727 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/05/">May (2)</a></li>
16728
16729 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/06/">June (5)</a></li>
16730
16731 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/07/">July (2)</a></li>
16732
16733 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/08/">August (1)</a></li>
16734
16735 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16736
16737 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/11/">November (1)</a></li>
16738
16739 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/12/">December (4)</a></li>
16740
16741 </ul></li>
16742
16743 <li>2018
16744 <ul>
16745
16746 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/01/">January (1)</a></li>
16747
16748 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/02/">February (5)</a></li>
16749
16750 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/03/">March (5)</a></li>
16751
16752 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/04/">April (3)</a></li>
16753
16754 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16755
16756 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/07/">July (5)</a></li>
16757
16758 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/08/">August (3)</a></li>
16759
16760 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/09/">September (3)</a></li>
16761
16762 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/10/">October (5)</a></li>
16763
16764 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/11/">November (2)</a></li>
16765
16766 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/12/">December (4)</a></li>
16767
16768 </ul></li>
16769
16770 <li>2017
16771 <ul>
16772
16773 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
16774
16775 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
16776
16777 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
16778
16779 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
16780
16781 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
16782
16783 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
16784
16785 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
16786
16787 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
16788
16789 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
16790
16791 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (3)</a></li>
16792
16793 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/12/">December (4)</a></li>
16794
16795 </ul></li>
16796
16797 <li>2016
16798 <ul>
16799
16800 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
16801
16802 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
16803
16804 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
16805
16806 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
16807
16808 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
16809
16810 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16811
16812 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
16813
16814 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
16815
16816 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
16817
16818 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
16819
16820 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
16821
16822 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
16823
16824 </ul></li>
16825
16826 <li>2015
16827 <ul>
16828
16829 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
16830
16831 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
16832
16833 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
16834
16835 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
16836
16837 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
16838
16839 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
16840
16841 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
16842
16843 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
16844
16845 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
16846
16847 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
16848
16849 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
16850
16851 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
16852
16853 </ul></li>
16854
16855 <li>2014
16856 <ul>
16857
16858 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
16859
16860 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
16861
16862 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
16863
16864 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
16865
16866 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
16867
16868 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16869
16870 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
16871
16872 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
16873
16874 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
16875
16876 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
16877
16878 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
16879
16880 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
16881
16882 </ul></li>
16883
16884 <li>2013
16885 <ul>
16886
16887 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
16888
16889 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
16890
16891 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
16892
16893 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
16894
16895 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
16896
16897 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
16898
16899 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
16900
16901 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
16902
16903 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
16904
16905 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
16906
16907 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
16908
16909 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
16910
16911 </ul></li>
16912
16913 <li>2012
16914 <ul>
16915
16916 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
16917
16918 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
16919
16920 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
16921
16922 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
16923
16924 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
16925
16926 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
16927
16928 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
16929
16930 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
16931
16932 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
16933
16934 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
16935
16936 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
16937
16938 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
16939
16940 </ul></li>
16941
16942 <li>2011
16943 <ul>
16944
16945 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
16946
16947 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
16948
16949 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
16950
16951 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
16952
16953 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
16954
16955 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16956
16957 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
16958
16959 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
16960
16961 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
16962
16963 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
16964
16965 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
16966
16967 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
16968
16969 </ul></li>
16970
16971 <li>2010
16972 <ul>
16973
16974 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
16975
16976 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16977
16978 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
16979
16980 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
16981
16982 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
16983
16984 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
16985
16986 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
16987
16988 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
16989
16990 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
16991
16992 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
16993
16994 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
16995
16996 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
16997
16998 </ul></li>
16999
17000 <li>2009
17001 <ul>
17002
17003 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
17004
17005 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
17006
17007 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
17008
17009 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
17010
17011 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17012
17013 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
17014
17015 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
17016
17017 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
17018
17019 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
17020
17021 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
17022
17023 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
17024
17025 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
17026
17027 </ul></li>
17028
17029 <li>2008
17030 <ul>
17031
17032 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
17033
17034 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
17035
17036 </ul></li>
17037
17038 </ul>
17039
17040
17041
17042 <h2>Tags</h2>
17043 <ul>
17044
17045  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (19)</a></li>
17046
17047  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
17048
17049  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
17050
17051  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
17052
17053  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/betalkontant">betalkontant (9)</a></li>
17054
17055  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (13)</a></li>
17056
17057  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (17)</a></li>
17058
17059  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
17060
17061  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (3)</a></li>
17062
17063  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (199)</a></li>
17064
17065  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (159)</a></li>
17066
17067  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (9)</a></li>
17068
17069  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (11)</a></li>
17070
17071  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (18)</a></li>
17072
17073  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (32)</a></li>
17074
17075  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
17076
17077  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (461)</a></li>
17078
17079  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
17080
17081  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (14)</a></li>
17082
17083  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (34)</a></li>
17084
17085  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
17086
17087  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (20)</a></li>
17088
17089  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
17090
17091  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (43)</a></li>
17092
17093  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (18)</a></li>
17094
17095  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (23)</a></li>
17096
17097  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi (6)</a></li>
17098
17099  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
17100
17101  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (5)</a></li>
17102
17103  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
17104
17105  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc (5)</a></li>
17106
17107  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
17108
17109  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
17110
17111  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/madewithcc">madewithcc (3)</a></li>
17112
17113  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
17114
17115  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (46)</a></li>
17116
17117  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (15)</a></li>
17118
17119  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5 (25)</a></li>
17120
17121  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (324)</a></li>
17122
17123  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (199)</a></li>
17124
17125  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (41)</a></li>
17126
17127  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
17128
17129  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch (4)</a></li>
17130
17131  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (76)</a></li>
17132
17133  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (114)</a></li>
17134
17135  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (4)</a></li>
17136
17137  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
17138
17139  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
17140
17141  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
17142
17143  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (17)</a></li>
17144
17145  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
17146
17147  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (7)</a></li>
17148
17149  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
17150
17151  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (60)</a></li>
17152
17153  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
17154
17155  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
17156
17157  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (76)</a></li>
17158
17159  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (7)</a></li>
17160
17161  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (14)</a></li>
17162
17163  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (65)</a></li>
17164
17165  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (5)</a></li>
17166
17167  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
17168
17169  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
17170
17171  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri (22)</a></li>
17172
17173  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (80)</a></li>
17174
17175  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
17176
17177  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (42)</a></li>
17178
17179 </ul>
17180
17181
17182     </div>
17183     <p style="text-align: right">
17184  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
17185 </p>
17186
17187   </body>
17188 </html>