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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Six_complete_translations_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_for_Buster.html">Six complete translations of The Debian Administrator's Handbook for Buster</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          5th July 2021
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>I am happy observe that the <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The
  32 Debian Administrator's Handbook</a> is available in six languages now.
  33 I am not sure which one of these are completely proof read, but the
  34 complete book is available in these languages:
  35
  36 <ul>
  37
  38 <li>English</li>
  39 <li>Norwegian Bokmål</li>
  40 <li>German</li>
  41 <li>Indonesian</li>
  42 <li>Brazil Portuguese</li>
  43 <li>Spanish</li>
  44
  45 </ul>
  46
  47 <p>This is the list of languages more than 70% complete, in other
  48 words with not too much left to do:</p>
  49
  50 <ul>
  51
  52 <li>Chinese (Simplified) - 90%</li>
  53 <li>French - 79%</li>
  54 <li>Italian - 79%</li>
  55 <li>Japanese - 77%</li>
  56 <li>Arabic (Morocco) - 75%</li>
  57 <li>Persian - 71%</li>
  58
  59 </ul>
  60
  61 <p>I wonder how long it will take to bring these to 100%.</p>
  62
  63 <p>Then there is the list of languages about halfway done:</p>
  64
  65 <ul>
  66
  67 <li>Russian - 63%</li>
  68 <li>Swedish - 53%</li>
  69 <li>Chinese (Traditional) - 46%</li>
  70 <li>Catalan - 45%</li>
  71
  72 </ul>
  73
  74 <p>Several are on to a good start:</p>
  75
  76 <ul>
  77
  78 <li>Dutch - 26%</li>
  79 <li>Vietnamese - 25%</li>
  80 <li>Polish - 23%</li>
  81 <li>Czech - 22%</li>
  82 <li>Turkish - 18%</li>
  83
  84 </ul>
  85
  86 <p>Finally, there are the ones just getting started:</p>
  87
  88 <ul>
  89
  90 <li>Korean - 4%</li>
  91 <li>Croatian - 2%</li>
  92 <li>Greek - 2%</li>
  93 <li>Danish - 1%</li>
  94 <li>Romanian - 1%</li>
  95
  96 </ul>
  97
  98 <p>If you want to help provide a Debian instruction book in your own
  99 language, visit
 100 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/#languages">Weblate</a>
 101 to contribute to the translations.</p>
 102
 103 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 104 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 105 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 106
 107       </div>
 108       <div class="tags">
 109
 110
 111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 112
 113
 114       </div>
 115     </div>
 116     <div class="padding"></div>
 117
 118     <div class="entry">
 119       <div class="title">
 120         <a href="http://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>
 121       </div>
 122       <div class="date">
 123         12th January 2021
 124       </div>
 125       <div class="body">
 126         <p>After a lot of hard work by its maintainer Alexandre Viau and
 127 others, the decentralized communication platform
 128 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami</a>
 129 (earlier known as Ring), managed to get
 130 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">its latest version</a>
 131 into Debian Testing.  Several of its dependencies has caused build and
 132 propagation problems, which all seem to be solved now.</p>
 133
 134 <p>In addition to the fact that Jami is decentralized, similar to how
 135 bittorrent is decentralized, I first of all like how it is not
 136 connected to external IDs like phone numbers.  This allow me to set up
 137 computers to send me notifications using Jami without having to find
 138 get a phone number for each computer.  Automatic notification via Jami
 139 is also made trivial thanks to the provided client side API (as a DBus
 140 service).  Here is my bourne shell script demonstrating how to let any
 141 system send a message to any Jami address.  It will create a new
 142 identity before sending the message, if no Jami identity exist
 143 already:</p>
 144
 145 <p><pre>
 146 #!/bin/sh
 147 #
 148 # Usage: $0 <jami-address> <message>
 149 #
 150 # Send <message> to <jami-address>, create local jami account if
 151 # missing.
 152 #
 153 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice
 154 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
 155
 156
 157 if [ -z "$HOME" ] ; then
 158     echo "error: missing \$HOME, required for dbus to work"
 159     exit 1
 160 fi
 161
 162 # First, get dbus running if not already running
 163 DBUSLAUNCH=/usr/bin/dbus-launch
 164 PIDFILE=/run/asterisk/dbus-session.pid
 165 if [ -e $PIDFILE ] ; then
 166     . $PIDFILE
 167     if ! kill -0 $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID 2>/dev/null ; then
 168         unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
 169     fi
 170 fi
 171 if [ -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ] && [ -x "$DBUSLAUNCH" ]; then
 172     DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=$HOME/.dbus"
 173     dbus-daemon --session --address="$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" --nofork --nopidfile --syslog-only < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 3>&1 &
 174     DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$!
 175     (
 176         echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID
 177         echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=\""$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"\"
 178         echo export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
 179     ) > $PIDFILE
 180     . $PIDFILE
 181 fi &
 182
 183 dringop() {
 184     part="$1"; shift
 185     op="$1"; shift
 186     dbus-send --session \
 187         --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
 188 }
 189
 190 dringopreply() {
 191     part="$1"; shift
 192     op="$1"; shift
 193     dbus-send --session --print-reply \
 194         --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
 195 }
 196
 197 firstaccount() {
 198     dringopreply ConfigurationManager getAccountList | \
 199       grep string | awk -F'"' '{print $2}' | head -n 1
 200 }
 201
 202 account=$(firstaccount)
 203
 204 if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
 205     echo "Missing local account, trying to create it"
 206     dringop ConfigurationManager addAccount \
 207       dict:string:string:"Account.type","RING","Account.videoEnabled","false"
 208     account=$(firstaccount)
 209     if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
 210         echo "unable to create local account"
 211         exit 1
 212     fi
 213 fi
 214
 215 # Not using dringopreply to ensure $2 can contain spaces
 216 dbus-send --print-reply --session \
 217   --dest=cx.ring.Ring \
 218   /cx/ring/Ring/ConfigurationManager \
 219   cx.ring.Ring.ConfigurationManager.sendTextMessage \
 220   string:"$account" string:"$1" \
 221   dict:string:string:"text/plain","$2"
 222 </pre></p>
 223
 224 <p>If you want to check it out yourself, visit the
 225 <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami system project page</a> to learn
 226 more, and install the latest Jami client from Debian Unstable or
 227 Testing.</p>
 228
 229 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 230 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 231 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 232
 233       </div>
 234       <div class="tags">
 235
 236
 237         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 238
 239
 240       </div>
 241     </div>
 242     <div class="padding"></div>
 243
 244     <div class="entry">
 245       <div class="title">
 246         <a href="http://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>
 247       </div>
 248       <div class="date">
 249         20th October 2020
 250       </div>
 251       <div class="body">
 252         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width="60%"/></p>
 253
 254 <p>I am happy to report that we finally made it!  Norwegian Bokmål
 255 became the first translation published on paper of the new Buster
 256 based edition of "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
 257 Administrator's Handbook</a>".  The print proof reading copy arrived
 258 some days ago, and it looked good, so now the book is approved for
 259 general distribution.  This updated paperback edition <a
 260 href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available from
 261 lulu.com</a>.  The book is also available for download in electronic
 262 form as PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, and can also be
 263 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online</a>.</p>
 264
 265 <p>I am very happy to wrap up this Creative Common licensed project,
 266 which concludes several months of work by several volunteers. The
 267 number of Linux related books published in Norwegian are few, and I
 268 really hope this one will gain many readers, as it is packed with deep
 269 knowledge on Linux and the Debian ecosystem.  The book will be
 270 available for various Internet book stores like Amazon and Barnes &
 271 Noble soon, but I recommend buying
 272 "<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
 273 for Debian-administratoren</a>" directly from the source at Lulu.
 274
 275 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 276 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 277 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 278
 279       </div>
 280       <div class="tags">
 281
 282
 283         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 284
 285
 286       </div>
 287     </div>
 288     <div class="padding"></div>
 289
 290     <div class="entry">
 291       <div class="title">
 292         <a href="http://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>
 293       </div>
 294       <div class="date">
 295         11th September 2020
 296       </div>
 297       <div class="body">
 298         <p>Thanks to the good work of several volunteers, the updated edition
 299 of the Norwegian translation for
 300 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
 301 Handbook</a>" is now almost completed.  After many months of proof
 302 reading, I consider the proof reading complete enough for us to move
 303 to the next step, and have asked for the print version to be prepared
 304 and sent of to the print on demand service lulu.com.  While it is
 305 still not to late if you find any incorrect translations on
 306 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
 307 hosted Weblate service</a>, but it will be soon. :) You can check out
 308 <a href=" https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">the Buster
 309 edition on the web</a> until the print edition is ready.</p>
 310
 311 <p>The book will be for sale on lulu.com and various web book stores,
 312 with links available from the web site for the book linked to above.
 313 I hope a lot of readers find it useful.</p>
 314
 315 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 316 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 317 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 318
 319       </div>
 320       <div class="tags">
 321
 322
 323         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 324
 325
 326       </div>
 327     </div>
 328     <div class="padding"></div>
 329
 330     <div class="entry">
 331       <div class="title">
 332         <a href="http://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>
 333       </div>
 334       <div class="date">
 335          4th July 2020
 336       </div>
 337       <div class="body">
 338         <p>Three years ago, the first Norwegian Bokmål edition of
 339 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
 340 Handbook</a>" was published.  This was based on Debian Jessie.  Now a
 341 new and updated version based on Buster is getting ready.  Work on the
 342 updated Norwegian Bokmål edition has been going on for a few months
 343 now, and yesterday, we reached the first mile stone, with 100% of the
 344 texts being translated.  A lot of proof reading remains, of course,
 345 but a major step towards a new edition has been taken.</p>
 346
 347 <p>The book is translated by volunteers, and we would love to get some
 348 help with the proof reading.  The translation uses
 349 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
 350 hosted Weblate service</a>, and we welcome everyone to have a look and
 351 submit improvements and suggestions.  There is also a proof readers
 352 PDF available on request, get in touch if you want to help out that
 353 way.</p>
 354
 355 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 356 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 357 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 358
 359       </div>
 360       <div class="tags">
 361
 362
 363         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 364
 365
 366       </div>
 367     </div>
 368     <div class="padding"></div>
 369
 370     <div class="entry">
 371       <div class="title">
 372         <a href="http://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>
 373       </div>
 374       <div class="date">
 375          6th June 2020
 376       </div>
 377       <div class="body">
 378         <p>As a member of the <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix
 379 User Group</a>, I have the pleasure of receiving the
 380 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a> magazine
 381 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/">;login:</a>
 382 several times a year.  I rarely have time to read all the articles,
 383 but try to at least skim through them all as there is a lot of nice
 384 knowledge passed on there.  I even carry the latest issue with me most
 385 of the time to try to get through all the articles when I have a few
 386 spare minutes.</p>
 387
 388 <p>The other day I came across a nice article titled
 389 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/winter2018/oneill">The
 390 Secure Socket API: TLS as an Operating System Service</a>" with a
 391 marvellous idea I hope can make it all the way into the POSIX standard.
 392 The idea is as simple as it is powerful.  By introducing a new
 393 socket() option IPPROTO_TLS to use TLS, and a system wide service to
 394 handle setting up TLS connections, one both make it trivial to add TLS
 395 support to any program currently using the POSIX socket API, and gain
 396 system wide control over certificates, TLS versions and encryption
 397 systems used.  Instead of doing this:</p>
 398
 399 <p><blockquote><pre>
 400 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
 401 </pre></blockquote></p>
 402
 403 <p>the program code would be doing this:<p>
 404
 405 <p><blockquote><pre>
 406 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TLS);
 407 </pre></blockquote></p>
 408
 409 <p>According to the ;login: article, converting a C program to use TLS
 410 would normally modify only 5-10 lines in the code, which is amazing
 411 when compared to using for example the OpenSSL API.</p>
 412
 413 <p>The project has set up the
 414 <a href="https://securesocketapi.org/">https://securesocketapi.org/</a>
 415 web site to spread the idea, and the code for a kernel module and the
 416 associated system daemon is available from two github repositories:
 417 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa">ssa</a> and
 418 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa-daemon">ssa-daemon</a>.
 419 Unfortunately there is no explicit license information with the code,
 420 so its copyright status is unclear.  A
 421 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa/issues/2">request to solve
 422 this</a> about it has been unsolved since 2018-08-17.</p>
 423
 424 <p>I love the idea of extending socket() to gain TLS support, and
 425 understand why it is an advantage to implement this as a kernel module
 426 and system wide service daemon, but can not help to think that it
 427 would be a lot easier to get projects to move to this way of setting
 428 up TLS if it was done with a user space approach where programs
 429 wanting to use this API approach could just link with a wrapper
 430 library.</p>
 431
 432 <p>I recommend you check out this simple and powerful approach to more
 433 secure network connections. :)</p>
 434
 435 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 436 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 437 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 438
 439       </div>
 440       <div class="tags">
 441
 442
 443         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
 444
 445
 446       </div>
 447     </div>
 448     <div class="padding"></div>
 449
 450     <div class="entry">
 451       <div class="title">
 452         <a href="http://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>
 453       </div>
 454       <div class="date">
 455          8th May 2020
 456       </div>
 457       <div class="body">
 458         <p>Half a year ago,
 459 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">I
 460 wrote</a> about <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami communication
 461 client</a>, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication.  It
 462 handle both messages, audio and video.  It uses distributed hash
 463 tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
 464 other, which in my book is a plus.  I mentioned briefly that it could
 465 also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
 466 educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
 467 conferencing solution.  I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
 468 software, due to their <a href="https://zoom.us/terms">copyright
 469 license clauses</a> prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
 470 to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
 471 Zoom meetings with free software clients.</p>
 472
 473 <p>Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
 474 password set on the room.  The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
 475 (approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
 476 conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
 477 is not great.  I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
 478 without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
 479 until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base.  But
 480 another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected.  I
 481 could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
 482 dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
 483 Zoom.  I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
 484 Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
 485 through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
 486 be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
 487 connecting via SIP.  There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
 488 Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end.  I got help from a
 489 very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part.  And being a
 490 very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
 491 Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
 492 connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.</p>
 493
 494 <p>So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now.  The
 495 trick is already
 496 <a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip">documented
 497 from Zoom</a>, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
 498 password.  What is most surprising about this is that the
 499 automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
 500 connect via SIP do not mention this.  The SIP address to use normally
 501 consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
 502 of the Zoom SIP gateway.  But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
 503 room ID in front of the at sign.  The format is "<tt>[Meeting
 504 ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]</tt>", and you can here see how you
 505 can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
 506 presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
 507 The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
 508 then look like this (all using made up numbers):</p>
 509
 510 <p><blockquote>
 511 <tt>sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170</tt>
 512 </blockquote></p>
 513
 514 <p>Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
 515 recommend this setup to others. :)</p>
 516
 517 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 518 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 519 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 520
 521       </div>
 522       <div class="tags">
 523
 524
 525         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 526
 527
 528       </div>
 529     </div>
 530     <div class="padding"></div>
 531
 532     <div class="entry">
 533       <div class="title">
 534         <a href="http://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>
 535       </div>
 536       <div class="date">
 537         29th April 2020
 538       </div>
 539       <div class="body">
 540         <p>The curiosity got the better of me when
 541 <a href="https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/04/06/1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers">Slashdot
 542 reported</a> that New Jersey was desperately looking for
 543 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL">COBOL</a> programmers,
 544 and a few days later it was reported that
 545 <a href="https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce">IBM
 546 tried to locate COBOL programmers</a>.</p>
 547
 548 <p>I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
 549 learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
 550 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/">GnuCOBOL</a> was
 551 already <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol">in
 552 Debian</a>.  It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a "compiler"
 553 transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
 554 Studio to build binaries.</p>
 555
 556 <p>I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
 557 quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
 558 taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced.  A
 559 new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.</p>
 560
 561 <p>Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
 562 introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs.  It was fun to
 563 learn a new programming language.  If you want to test for yourself,
 564 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL">the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
 565 page</a> have a few simple examples to get you startet.</p>
 566
 567 <p>As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
 568 standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
 569 test suite, which sound good to me.  It is nice to know it is possible
 570 to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
 571 very happy such nice free software project as this is available.  If
 572 you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.</p>
 573
 574 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 575 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 576 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 577
 578       </div>
 579       <div class="tags">
 580
 581
 582         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 583
 584
 585       </div>
 586     </div>
 587     <div class="padding"></div>
 588
 589     <div class="entry">
 590       <div class="title">
 591         <a href="http://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>
 592       </div>
 593       <div class="date">
 594         19th June 2019
 595       </div>
 596       <div class="body">
 597         <p>Some years ago, in 2016, I
 598 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">wrote
 599 for the first time about</a> the Ring peer to peer messaging system.
 600 It would provide messaging without any central server coordinating the
 601 system and without requiring all users to register a phone number or
 602 own a mobile phone.  Back then, I could not get it to work, and put it
 603 aside until it had seen more development.  A few days ago I decided to
 604 give it another try, and am happy to report that this time I am able
 605 to not only send and receive messages, but also place audio and video
 606 calls.  But only if UDP is not blocked into your network.</p>
 607
 608 <p>The Ring system changed name earlier this year to
 609 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami</a>.  I
 610 tried doing web search for 'ring' when I discovered it for the first
 611 time, and can only applaud this change as it is impossible to find
 612 something called Ring among the noise of other uses of that word.  Now
 613 you can search for 'jami' and this client and
 614 <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami system</a> is the first hit at
 615 least on duckduckgo.</p>
 616
 617 <p>Jami will by default encrypt messages as well as audio and video
 618 calls, and try to send them directly between the communicating parties
 619 if possible.  If this proves impossible (for example if both ends are
 620 behind NAT), it will use a central SIP TURN server maintained by the
 621 Jami project.  Jami can also be a normal SIP client.  If the SIP
 622 server is unencrypted, the audio and video calls will also be
 623 unencrypted.  This is as far as I know the only case where Jami will
 624 do anything without encryption.</p>
 625
 626 <p>Jami is available for several platforms: Linux, Windows, MacOSX,
 627 Android, iOS, and Android TV.  It is included in Debian already.  Jami
 628 also work for those using F-Droid without any Google connections,
 629 while Signal do not.
 630 <a href="https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ring-project/wikis/technical/Protocol">The
 631 protocol</a> is described in the Ring project wiki.  The system uses a
 632 distributed hash table (DHT) system (similar to BitTorrent) running
 633 over UDP.  On one of the networks I use, I discovered Jami failed to
 634 work.  I tracked this down to the fact that incoming UDP packages
 635 going to ports 1-49999 were blocked, and the DHT would pick a random
 636 port and end up in the low range most of the time.  After talking to
 637 the developers, I solved this by enabling the dhtproxy in the
 638 settings, thus using TCP to talk to a central DHT proxy instead of
 639
 640 peering directly with others.  I've been told the developers are
 641 working on allowing DHT to use TCP to avoid this problem.  I also ran
 642 into a problem when trying to talk to the version of Ring included in
 643 Debian Stable (Stretch).  Apparently the protocol changed between
 644 beta2 and the current version, making these clients incompatible.
 645 Hopefully the protocol will not be made incompatible in the
 646 future.</p>
 647
 648 <p>It is worth noting that while looking at Jami and its features, I
 649 came across another communication platform I have not tested yet.  The
 650 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)">Tox protocol</a>
 651 and <a href="https://tox.chat/">family of Tox clients</a>.  It might
 652 become the topic of a future blog post.</p>
 653
 654 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 655 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 656 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 657
 658       </div>
 659       <div class="tags">
 660
 661
 662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 663
 664
 665       </div>
 666     </div>
 667     <div class="padding"></div>
 668
 669     <div class="entry">
 670       <div class="title">
 671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Strategispillet_Unknown_Horizons_n__tilgjengelig_p__bokm_l.html">Strategispillet Unknown Horizons nå tilgjengelig på bokmål</a>
 672       </div>
 673       <div class="date">
 674         23rd January 2019
 675       </div>
 676       <div class="body">
 677         <p>I høst ble jeg inspirert til å bidra til oversettelsen av
 678 <a href="http://unknown-horizons.org/">strategispillet Unknown
 679 Horizons</a>, og oversatte de nesten 200 strengene i prosjektet til
 680 bokmål.  Deretter har jeg gått å ventet på at det kom en ny utgave som
 681 inneholdt disse oversettelsene.  Nå er endelig ventetiden over.  Den
 682 nye versjonen kom på nyåret, og ble
 683 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/unknown-horizons">lastet opp i
 684 Debian</a> for noen få dager siden.  I går kveld fikk jeg testet det ut, og
 685 må innrømme at oversettelsene fungerer fint.  Fant noen få tekster som
 686 måtte justeres, men ikke noe alvorlig.  Har oppdatert
 687 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/uh/">oversettelsen på
 688 Weblate</a>, slik at neste utgave vil være enda bedre. :)</p>
 689
 690 <p>Spillet er et ressursstyringsspill ala Civilization, og er morsomt
 691 å spille for oss som liker slikt. :)</p>
 692
 693 <p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
 694 det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
 695 til min adresse
 696 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
 697 Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
 698
 699       </div>
 700       <div class="tags">
 701
 702
 703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
 704
 705
 706       </div>
 707     </div>
 708     <div class="padding"></div>
 709
 710     <div class="entry">
 711       <div class="title">
 712         <a href="http://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>
 713       </div>
 714       <div class="date">
 715         22nd January 2019
 716       </div>
 717       <div class="body">
 718         <p>I am amazed and very pleased to discover that since a few days ago,
 719 everything you need to program the <a href="https://microbit.org/">BBC
 720 micro:bit</a> is available from the Debian archive.  All this is
 721 thanks to the hard work of Nick Morrott and the Debian python
 722 packaging team.  The micro:bit project recommend the mu-editor to
 723 program the microcomputer, as this editor will take care of all the
 724 machinery required to injekt/flash micropython alongside the program
 725 into the micro:bit, as long as the pieces are available.</p>
 726
 727 <p>There are three main pieces involved.  The first to enter Debian
 728 was
 729 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-uflash">python-uflash</a>,
 730 which was accepted into the archive 2019-01-12.  The next one was
 731 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mu-editor">mu-editor</a>, which
 732 showed up 2019-01-13.  The final and hardest part to to into the
 733 archive was
 734 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firmware-microbit-micropython">firmware-microbit-micropython</a>,
 735 which needed to get its build system and dependencies into Debian
 736 before it was accepted 2019-01-20.  The last one is already in Debian
 737 Unstable and should enter Debian Testing / Buster in three days.  This
 738 all allow any user of the micro:bit to get going by simply running
 739 'apt install mu-editor' when using Testing or Unstable, and once
 740 Buster is released as stable, all the users of Debian stable will be
 741 catered for.</p>
 742
 743 <p>As a minor final touch, I added rules to
 744 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">the isenkram
 745 package</a> for recognizing micro:bit and recommend the mu-editor
 746 package.  This make sure any user of the isenkram desktop daemon will
 747 get a popup suggesting to install mu-editor then the USB cable from
 748 the micro:bit is inserted for the first time.</p>
 749
 750 <p>This should make it easier to have fun.</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="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
 761
 762
 763       </div>
 764     </div>
 765     <div class="padding"></div>
 766
 767     <div class="entry">
 768       <div class="title">
 769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html">Learn to program with Minetest on Debian</a>
 770       </div>
 771       <div class="date">
 772         15th December 2018
 773       </div>
 774       <div class="body">
 775         <p>A fun way to learn how to program
 776 <a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a> is to follow the
 777 instructions in the book
 778 "<a href="https://nostarch.com/programwithminecraft">Learn to program
 779 with Minecraft</a>", which introduces programming in Python to people
 780 who like to play with Minecraft.  The book uses a Python library to
 781 talk to a TCP/IP socket with an API accepting build instructions and
 782 providing information about the current players in a Minecraft world.
 783 The TCP/IP API was first created for the Minecraft implementation for
 784 Raspberry Pi, and has since been ported to some server versions of
 785 Minecraft.  The book contain recipes for those using Windows, MacOSX
 786 and Raspian.  But a little known fact is that you can follow the same
 787 recipes using the free software construction game
 788 <a href="https://minetest.net/">Minetest</a>.</p>
 789
 790 <p>There is <a href="https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod">a
 791 Minetest module implementing the same API</a>, making it possible to
 792 use the Python programs coded to talk to Minecraft with Minetest too.
 793 I
 794 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/minetest-mod-pycraft_0.20%2Bgit20180331.0376a0a%2Bdfsg-1.html">uploaded
 795 this module</a> to Debian two weeks ago, and as soon as it clears the
 796 FTP masters NEW queue, learning to program Python with Minetest on
 797 Debian will be a simple 'apt install' away.  The Debian package is
 798 maintained as part of the Debian Games team, and
 799 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/unfinished/minetest-mod-pycraft">the
 800 packaging rules</a> are currently located under 'unfinished' on
 801 Salsa.</p>
 802
 803 <p>You will most likely need to install several of the Minetest
 804 modules in Debian for the examples included with the library to work
 805 well, as there are several blocks used by the example scripts that are
 806 provided via modules in Minetest.  Without the required blocks, a
 807 simple stone block is used instead.  My initial testing with a analog
 808 clock did not get gold arms as instructed in the python library, but
 809 instead used stone arms.</p>
 810
 811 <p>I tried to find a way to add the API to the desktop version of
 812 Minecraft, but were unable to find any working recipes.  The
 813 <a href="https://www.epiphanydigest.com/tag/minecraft-python-api/">recipes</a>
 814 I <a href="https://github.com/kbsriram/mcpiapi">found</a> are only
 815 working with a standalone Minecraft server setup.  Are there any
 816 options to use with the normal desktop version?</p>
 817
 818 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 819 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 820 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 821
 822       </div>
 823       <div class="tags">
 824
 825
 826         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 827
 828
 829       </div>
 830     </div>
 831     <div class="padding"></div>
 832
 833     <div class="entry">
 834       <div class="title">
 835         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_an_official_MIME_type_for_patches_.html">Time for an official MIME type for patches?</a>
 836       </div>
 837       <div class="date">
 838          1st November 2018
 839       </div>
 840       <div class="body">
 841         <p>As part of my involvement in
 842 <a href="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">the Nikita
 843 archive API project</a>, I've been importing a fairly large lump of
 844 emails into a test instance of the archive to see how well this would
 845 go.  I picked a subset of <a href="https://notmuchmail.org/">my
 846 notmuch email database</a>, all public emails sent to me via
 847 @lists.debian.org, giving me a set of around 216 000 emails to import.
 848 In the process, I had a look at the various attachments included in
 849 these emails, to figure out what to do with attachments, and noticed
 850 that one of the most common attachment formats do not have
 851 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">an
 852 official MIME type</a> registered with IANA/IETF.  The output from
 853 diff, ie the input for patch, is on the top 10 list of formats
 854 included in these emails.  At the moment people seem to use either
 855 text/x-patch or text/x-diff, but neither is officially registered.  It
 856 would be better if one official MIME type were registered and used
 857 everywhere.</p>
 858
 859 <p>To try to get one official MIME type for these files, I've brought
 860 up the topic on
 861 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/media-types">the
 862 media-types mailing list</a>.  If you are interested in discussion
 863 which MIME type to use as the official for patch files, or involved in
 864 making software using a MIME type for patches, perhaps you would like
 865 to join the discussion?</p>
 866
 867 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 868 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 869 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 870
 871       </div>
 872       <div class="tags">
 873
 874
 875         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 876
 877
 878       </div>
 879     </div>
 880     <div class="padding"></div>
 881
 882     <div class="entry">
 883       <div class="title">
 884         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Google_Drive_sync_using_grive_in_Debian.html">Automatic Google Drive sync using grive in Debian</a>
 885       </div>
 886       <div class="date">
 887          4th October 2018
 888       </div>
 889       <div class="body">
 890         <p>A few days, I rescued a Windows victim over to Debian.  To try to
 891 rescue the remains, I helped set up automatic sync with Google Drive.
 892 I did not find any sensible Debian package handling this
 893 automatically, so I rebuild the grive2 source from
 894 <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/">the Ubuntu UPD8 PPA</a> to do the
 895 task and added a autostart desktop entry and a small shell script to
 896 run in the background while the user is logged in to do the sync.
 897 Here is a sketch of the setup for future reference.</p>
 898
 899 <p>I first created <tt>~/googledrive</tt>, entered the directory and
 900 ran '<tt>grive -a</tt>' to authenticate the machine/user.  Next, I
 901 created a autostart hook in <tt>~/.config/autostart/grive.desktop</tt>
 902 to start the sync when the user log in:</p>
 903
 904 <p><blockquote><pre>
 905 [Desktop Entry]
 906 Name=Google drive autosync
 907 Type=Application
 908 Exec=/home/user/bin/grive-sync
 909 </pre></blockquote></p>
 910
 911 <p>Finally, I wrote the <tt>~/bin/grive-sync</tt> script to sync
 912 ~/googledrive/ with the files in Google Drive.</p>
 913
 914 <p><blockquote><pre>
 915 #!/bin/sh
 916 set -e
 917 cd ~/
 918 cleanup() {
 919     if [ "$syncpid" ] ; then
 920         kill $syncpid
 921     fi
 922 }
 923 trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT
 924 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh listen googledrive 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%" &
 925 syncpdi=$!
 926 while true; do
 927     if ! xhost >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
 928         echo "no DISPLAY, exiting as the user probably logged out"
 929         exit 1
 930     fi
 931     if [ ! -e /run/user/1000/grive-sync.sh_googledrive ] ; then
 932         /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh sync googledrive
 933     fi
 934     sleep 300
 935 done 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%"
 936 </pre></blockquote></p>
 937
 938 <p>Feel free to use the setup if you want.  It can be assumed to be
 939 GNU GPL v2 licensed (or any later version, at your leisure), but I
 940 doubt this code is possible to claim copyright on.</p>
 941
 942 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 943 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 944 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 945
 946       </div>
 947       <div class="tags">
 948
 949
 950         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 951
 952
 953       </div>
 954     </div>
 955     <div class="padding"></div>
 956
 957     <div class="entry">
 958       <div class="title">
 959         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_the_Kodi_API_to_play_Youtube_videos.html">Using the Kodi API to play Youtube videos</a>
 960       </div>
 961       <div class="date">
 962          2nd September 2018
 963       </div>
 964       <div class="body">
 965         <p>I continue to explore my Kodi installation, and today I wanted to
 966 tell it to play a youtube URL I received in a chat, without having to
 967 insert search terms using the on-screen keyboard.  After searching the
 968 web for API access to the Youtube plugin and testing a bit, I managed
 969 to find a recipe that worked.  If you got a kodi instance with its API
 970 available from http://kodihost/jsonrpc, you can try the following to
 971 have check out a nice cover band.</p>
 972
 973 <p><blockquote><pre>curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 974   --data-binary '{ "id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "Player.Open",
 975   "params": {"item": { "file":
 976   "plugin://plugin.video.youtube/play/?video_id=LuRGVM9O0qg" } } }' \
 977   http://projector.local/jsonrpc</pre></blockquote></p>
 978
 979 <p>I've extended kodi-stream program to take a video source as its
 980 first argument.  It can now handle direct video links, youtube links
 981 and 'desktop' to stream my desktop to Kodi.  It is almost like a
 982 Chromecast. :)</p>
 983
 984 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 985 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 986 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 987
 988       </div>
 989       <div class="tags">
 990
 991
 992         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 993
 994
 995       </div>
 996     </div>
 997     <div class="padding"></div>
 998
 999     <div class="entry">
1000       <div class="title">
1001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html">Sharing images with friends and family using RSS and EXIF/XMP metadata</a>
1002       </div>
1003       <div class="date">
1004         31st July 2018
1005       </div>
1006       <div class="body">
1007         <p>For a while now, I have looked for a sensible way to share images
1008 with my family using a self hosted solution, as it is unacceptable to
1009 place images from my personal life under the control of strangers
1010 working for data hoarders like Google or Dropbox.  The last few days I
1011 have drafted an approach that might work out, and I would like to
1012 share it with you.  I would like to publish images on a server under
1013 my control, and point some Internet connected display units using some
1014 free and open standard to the images I published.  As my primary
1015 language is not limited to ASCII, I need to store metadata using
1016 UTF-8.  Many years ago, I hoped to find a digital photo frame capable
1017 of reading a RSS feed with image references (aka using the
1018 &lt;enclosure&gt; RSS tag), but was unable to find a current supplier
1019 of such frames.  In the end I gave up that approach.</p>
1020
1021 <p>Some months ago, I discovered that
1022 <a href="https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/">XScreensaver</a> is able to
1023 read images from a RSS feed, and used it to set up a screen saver on
1024 my home info screen, showing images from the Daily images feed from
1025 NASA.  This proved to work well.  More recently I discovered that
1026 <a href="https://kodi.tv">Kodi</a> (both using
1027 <a href="https://www.openelec.tv/">OpenELEC</a> and
1028 <a href="https://libreelec.tv">LibreELEC</a>) provide the
1029 <a href="https://github.com/grinsted/script.screensaver.feedreader">Feedreader</a>
1030 screen saver capable of reading a RSS feed with images and news.  For
1031 fun, I used it this summer to test Kodi on my parents TV by hooking up
1032 a Raspberry PI unit with LibreELEC, and wanted to provide them with a
1033 screen saver showing selected pictures from my selection.</p>
1034
1035 <p>Armed with motivation and a test photo frame, I set out to generate
1036 a RSS feed for the Kodi instance.  I adjusted my <a
1037 href="https://freedombox.org/">Freedombox</a> instance, created
1038 /var/www/html/privatepictures/, wrote a small Perl script to extract
1039 title and description metadata from the photo files and generate the
1040 RSS file.  I ended up using Perl instead of python, as the
1041 libimage-exiftool-perl Debian package seemed to handle the EXIF/XMP
1042 tags I ended up using, while python3-exif did not.  The relevant EXIF
1043 tags only support ASCII, so I had to find better alternatives.  XMP
1044 seem to have the support I need.</p>
1045
1046 <p>I am a bit unsure which EXIF/XMP tags to use, as I would like to
1047 use tags that can be easily added/updated using normal free software
1048 photo managing software.  I ended up using the tags set using this
1049 exiftool command, as these tags can also be set using digiKam:</p>
1050
1051 <blockquote><pre>
1052 exiftool -headline='The RSS image title' \
1053   -description='The RSS image description.' \
1054   -subject+=for-family photo.jpeg
1055 </pre></blockquote>
1056
1057 <p>I initially tried the "-title" and "keyword" tags, but they were
1058 invisible in digiKam, so I changed to "-headline" and "-subject".  I
1059 use the keyword/subject 'for-family' to flag that the photo should be
1060 shared with my family.  Images with this keyword set are located and
1061 copied into my Freedombox for the RSS generating script to find.</p>
1062
1063 <p>Are there better ways to do this?  Get in touch if you have better
1064 suggestions.</p>
1065
1066 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1067 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1068 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1069
1070       </div>
1071       <div class="tags">
1072
1073
1074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1075
1076
1077       </div>
1078     </div>
1079     <div class="padding"></div>
1080
1081     <div class="entry">
1082       <div class="title">
1083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">Simple streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using GStreamer and RTP</a>
1084       </div>
1085       <div class="date">
1086         12th July 2018
1087       </div>
1088       <div class="body">
1089         <p>Last night, I wrote
1090 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">a
1091 recipe to stream a Linux desktop using VLC to a instance of Kodi</a>.
1092 During the day I received valuable feedback, and thanks to the
1093 suggestions I have been able to rewrite the recipe into a much simpler
1094 approach requiring no setup at all.  It is a single script that take
1095 care of it all.</p>
1096
1097 <p>This new script uses GStreamer instead of VLC to capture the
1098 desktop and stream it to Kodi.  This fixed the video quality issue I
1099 saw initially.  It further removes the need to add a m3u file on the
1100 Kodi machine, as it instead connects to
1101 <a href="https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v8">the JSON-RPC API in
1102 Kodi</a> and simply ask Kodi to play from the stream created using
1103 GStreamer.  Streaming the desktop to Kodi now become trivial.  Copy
1104 the script below, run it with the DNS name or IP address of the kodi
1105 server to stream to as the only argument, and watch your screen show
1106 up on the Kodi screen.  Note, it depend on multicast on the local
1107 network, so if you need to stream outside the local network, the
1108 script must be modified.  Also note, I have no idea if audio work, as
1109 I only care about the picture part.</p>
1110
1111 <blockquote><pre>
1112 #!/bin/sh
1113 #
1114 # Stream the Linux desktop view to Kodi.  See
1115 # http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html
1116 # for backgorund information.
1117
1118 # Make sure the stream is stopped in Kodi and the gstreamer process is
1119 # killed if something go wrong (for example if curl is unable to find the
1120 # kodi server).  Do the same when interrupting this script.
1121 kodicmd() {
1122     host="$1"
1123     cmd="$2"
1124     params="$3"
1125     curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
1126          --data-binary "{ \"id\": 1, \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\", \"method\": \"$cmd\", \"params\": $params }" \
1127          "http://$host/jsonrpc"
1128 }
1129 cleanup() {
1130     if [ -n "$kodihost" ] ; then
1131         # Stop the playing when we end
1132         playerid=$(kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.GetActivePlayers "{}" |
1133                             jq .result[].playerid)
1134         kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Stop "{ \"playerid\" : $playerid }" > /dev/null
1135     fi
1136     if [ "$gstpid" ] && kill -0 "$gstpid" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
1137         kill "$gstpid"
1138     fi
1139 }
1140 trap cleanup EXIT INT
1141
1142 if [ -n "$1" ]; then
1143     kodihost=$1
1144     shift
1145 else
1146     kodihost=kodi.local
1147 fi
1148
1149 mcast=239.255.0.1
1150 mcastport=1234
1151 mcastttl=1
1152
1153 pasrc=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | \
1154   cut -d" " -f2|head -1)
1155 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
1156   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
1157   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
1158   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
1159   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
1160   udpsink host=$mcast port=$mcastport ttl-mc=$mcastttl auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
1161   pulsesrc device=$pasrc ! audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux. \
1162   > /dev/null 2>&1 &
1163 gstpid=$!
1164
1165 # Give stream a second to get going
1166 sleep 1
1167
1168 # Ask kodi to start streaming using its JSON-RPC API
1169 kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Open \
1170         "{\"item\": { \"file\": \"udp://@$mcast:$mcastport\" } }" > /dev/null
1171
1172 # wait for gst to end
1173 wait "$gstpid"
1174 </pre></blockquote>
1175
1176 <p>I hope you find the approach useful.  I know I do.</p>
1177
1178 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1179 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1180 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1181
1182       </div>
1183       <div class="tags">
1184
1185
1186         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1187
1188
1189       </div>
1190     </div>
1191     <div class="padding"></div>
1192
1193     <div class="entry">
1194       <div class="title">
1195         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP</a>
1196       </div>
1197       <div class="date">
1198         12th July 2018
1199       </div>
1200       <div class="body">
1201         <p>PS: See
1202 <ahref="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">the
1203 followup post</a> for a even better approach.</p>
1204
1205 <p>A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
1206 my projector connected to Kodi.  I sadly had to admit that I had no
1207 idea, as it was a task I never had tried.  Since then, I have been
1208 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
1209 install on either side.  Today I found a way that seem to kind of
1210 work.  Not great, but it is a start.</p>
1211
1212 <p>I had a look at several approaches, for example
1213 <a href="https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming">using uPnP
1214 DLNA as described in 2011</a>, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
1215 local storage enough to store the stream locally.  This is not going
1216 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
1217 impossible for my friend to get working.</p>
1218
1219 <p>Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
1220 video stream that Kodi could play.  Preferably using
1221 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
1222 side when starting such stream.  Unfortunately, the only recipe I
1223 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
1224 seem to not be supported by Kodi.</p>
1225
1226 <p>On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working!  Unfortunately I
1227 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
1228 sending command and the file on the Kodi server.  But it is showing my
1229 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
1230 the programs I work on.</p>
1231
1232 <p>I did not spend much time investigating codeces.  I combined the
1233 rtp and rtsp recipes from
1234 <a href="https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/">the
1235 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples</a>, and was able to get
1236 this working on the desktop/streaming end.</p>
1237
1238 <blockquote><pre>
1239 vlc screen:// --sout \
1240   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp}'
1241 </pre></blockquote>
1242
1243 <p>I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
1244 same IP address:</p>
1245
1246 <blockquote><pre>
1247 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp \
1248   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
1249 </pre></blockquote>
1250
1251 <p>Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address.  As far
1252 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work.  In other
1253 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
1254 to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
1255 recipe.  To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
1256 file while the VLC stream is running.  The desktop then show up in my
1257 big screen. :)</p>
1258
1259 <p>When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
1260 the audio quality is really bad.  No idea if the problem is package
1261 loss or bad parameters for the transcode.  I do not know VLC nor Kodi
1262 enough to tell.</p>
1263
1264 <p><strong>Update 2018-07-12</strong>: Johannes Schauer send me a few
1265 succestions and reminded me about an important step.  The "screen:"
1266 input source is only available once the vlc-plugin-access-extra
1267 package is installed on Debian.  Without it, you will see this error
1268 message: "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'screen://'.  Check the log
1269 for details."  He further found that it is possible to drop some parts
1270 of the VLC command line to reduce the amount of hardcoded information.
1271 It is also useful to consider using cvlc to avoid having the VLC
1272 window in the desktop view.  In sum, this give us this command line on
1273 the source end
1274
1275 <blockquote><pre>
1276 cvlc screen:// --sout \
1277   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8080/}'
1278 </pre></blockquote>
1279
1280 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
1281
1282 <blockquote><pre>
1283 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/ \
1284   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
1285 </pre></blockquote>
1286
1287 <p>Still bad image quality, though.  But I did discover that streaming
1288 a DVD using dvdsimple:///dev/dvd as the source had excellent video and
1289 audio quality, so I guess the issue is in the input or transcoding
1290 parts, not the rtsp part.  I've tried to change the vb and ab
1291 parameters to use more bandwidth, but it did not make a
1292 difference.</p>
1293
1294 <p>I further received a suggestion from Einar Haraldseid to try using
1295 gstreamer instead of VLC, and this proved to work great!  He also
1296 provided me with the trick to get Kodi to use a multicast stream as
1297 its source.  By using this monstrous oneliner, I can stream my desktop
1298 with good video quality in reasonable framerate to the 239.255.0.1
1299 multicast address on port 1234:
1300
1301 <blockquote><pre>
1302 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
1303   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
1304   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
1305   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
1306   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
1307   udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=1 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
1308   pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | \
1309     grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' |  cut -d" " -f2|head -1) ! \
1310   audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
1311 </pre></blockquote>
1312
1313 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
1314
1315 <blockquote><pre>
1316 echo udp://@239.255.0.1:1234 \
1317   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
1318 </pre></blockquote>
1319
1320 <p>Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source.  It might not
1321 pick the one you need.  This approach will of course lead to trouble
1322 if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
1323 Note the ttl-mc=1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
1324 local network.  If the value is increased, your screen will be
1325 broadcasted further, one network "hop" for each increase (read up on
1326 multicast to learn more. :)!</p>
1327
1328 <p>Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
1329 could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
1330 The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
1331 seem to be doing a better job.</p>
1332
1333 <blockquote><pre>
1334 cvlc screen:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=239.255.0.1,port=1234,sdp=sap}'
1335 </pre></blockquote>
1336
1337 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1338 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1339 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1340
1341       </div>
1342       <div class="tags">
1343
1344
1345         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1346
1347
1348       </div>
1349     </div>
1350     <div class="padding"></div>
1351
1352     <div class="entry">
1353       <div class="title">
1354         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2018?</a>
1355       </div>
1356       <div class="date">
1357          9th July 2018
1358       </div>
1359       <div class="body">
1360         <p>Five years ago,
1361 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">I
1362 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was</a>, by
1363 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive.  Since
1364 then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
1365 the task a lot easier.  This made me want to repeat the measurement,
1366 to see how much things changed.  Here are the new numbers, for
1367 unstable only this time:
1368
1369 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
1370
1371 <pre>
1372   count MIME type
1373   ----- -----------------------
1374      56 image/jpeg
1375      55 image/png
1376      49 image/tiff
1377      48 image/gif
1378      39 image/bmp
1379      38 text/plain
1380      37 audio/mpeg
1381      34 application/ogg
1382      33 audio/x-flac
1383      32 audio/x-mp3
1384      30 audio/x-wav
1385      30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
1386      29 image/x-portable-pixmap
1387      27 inode/directory
1388      27 image/x-portable-bitmap
1389      27 audio/x-mpeg
1390      26 application/x-ogg
1391      25 audio/x-mpegurl
1392      25 audio/ogg
1393      24 text/html
1394 </pre>
1395
1396 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot: "cat
1397 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk '/^
1398 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"</p>
1399
1400 <p>It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
1401 as the most announced supported MIME type.  These days, thanks to the
1402 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
1403 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
1404 MIME type of the file using "file --mime &lt;filename&gt;", and then
1405 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
1406 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using "appstreamcli
1407 what-provides mimetype &lt;mime-type&gt;.  For example if you, like
1408 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
1409 list like this:</p>
1410
1411 <p><blockquote><pre>
1412 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
1413 Package: anjuta
1414 Package: audacious
1415 Package: baobab
1416 Package: cervisia
1417 Package: chirp
1418 Package: dolphin
1419 Package: doublecmd-common
1420 Package: easytag
1421 Package: enlightenment
1422 Package: ephoto
1423 Package: filelight
1424 Package: gwenview
1425 Package: k4dirstat
1426 Package: kaffeine
1427 Package: kdesvn
1428 Package: kid3
1429 Package: kid3-qt
1430 Package: nautilus
1431 Package: nemo
1432 Package: pcmanfm
1433 Package: pcmanfm-qt
1434 Package: qweborf
1435 Package: ranger
1436 Package: sirikali
1437 Package: spacefm
1438 Package: spacefm
1439 Package: vifm
1440 %
1441 </pre></blockquote></p>
1442
1443 <p>Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
1444 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:</p>
1445
1446 <p><blockquote><pre>
1447 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/vnd.sketchup.skp
1448 Could not find component providing 'mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp'.
1449 %
1450 </pre></blockquote></p>
1451
1452 <p>Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
1453 format:</p>
1454
1455 <p><blockquote><pre>
1456 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/sla|grep Package
1457 Package: cura
1458 Package: meshlab
1459 Package: printrun
1460 %
1461 </pre></blockquote></p>
1462
1463 <p>PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.</p>
1464
1465 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1466 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1467 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1468
1469       </div>
1470       <div class="tags">
1471
1472
1473         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1474
1475
1476       </div>
1477     </div>
1478     <div class="padding"></div>
1479
1480     <div class="entry">
1481       <div class="title">
1482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html">Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...</a>
1483       </div>
1484       <div class="date">
1485          8th July 2018
1486       </div>
1487       <div class="body">
1488         <p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
1489 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
1490 space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'.  I normally
1491 would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install &lt;somepackages&gt;' to
1492 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
1493 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
1494 Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
1495 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually.  I concluded
1496 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
1497 decided to see if I could automate it.  I came up with this small
1498 script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':</p>
1499
1500 <p><blockquote><pre>
1501 #!/bin/sh
1502 #
1503 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
1504 # upgradable package in one lump.  Fetching packages to upgrade using
1505 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
1506 # flag for manual/automatic.
1507
1508 set -e
1509
1510 ignore() {
1511     if [ "$1" ]; then
1512         grep -v "$1"
1513     else
1514         cat
1515     fi
1516 }
1517
1518 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
1519     echo "Upgrading $p"
1520     apt clean
1521     apt install --download-only -y $p
1522     for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
1523         if [ -e "$f" ]; then
1524             dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
1525             break
1526         fi
1527     done
1528 done
1529 </pre></blockquote></p>
1530
1531 <p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
1532 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
1533 downloaded packages using dpkg.  The idea is to upgrade packages
1534 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
1535 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency).  To
1536 use it, simply run it as root from the command line.  If it fail, try
1537 'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again.  This
1538 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
1539 packages.  dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.</p>
1540
1541 <p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
1542 upgrade.  The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
1543 the packages that are simply too large to unpack.  Today this was
1544 'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
1545 problems earlier (like TeX).</p>
1546
1547 <p>Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
1548 alternative ways to handle this.  The "unattended-upgrades
1549 --minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
1550 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
1551 first.  It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
1552 Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
1553 the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.</p>
1554
1555 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1556 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1557 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1558
1559       </div>
1560       <div class="tags">
1561
1562
1563         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1564
1565
1566       </div>
1567     </div>
1568     <div class="padding"></div>
1569
1570     <div class="entry">
1571       <div class="title">
1572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html">Version 3.1 of Cura, the 3D print slicer, is now in Debian</a>
1573       </div>
1574       <div class="date">
1575         13th February 2018
1576       </div>
1577       <div class="body">
1578         <p>A new version of the
1579 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">3D printer slicer
1580 software Cura</a>, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
1581 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid).  I hope you find it
1582 useful.  It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
1583 enter testing tomorrow.  See the
1584 <a href="https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes">release
1585 notes</a> for the list of bug fixes and new features.  Version 3.2
1586 was announced 6 days ago.  We will try to get it into Debian as
1587 well.</p>
1588
1589 <p>More information related to 3D printing is available on the
1590 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting">3D printing</a> and
1591 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer">3D printer</a> wiki pages
1592 in Debian.</p>
1593
1594 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1595 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1596 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1597
1598       </div>
1599       <div class="tags">
1600
1601
1602         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1603
1604
1605       </div>
1606     </div>
1607     <div class="padding"></div>
1608
1609     <div class="entry">
1610       <div class="title">
1611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html">Cura, the nice 3D print slicer, is now in Debian Unstable</a>
1612       </div>
1613       <div class="date">
1614         17th December 2017
1615       </div>
1616       <div class="body">
1617         <p>After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
1618 that the nice and user friendly 3D printer slicer software Cura just
1619 entered Debian Unstable.  It consist of five packages,
1620 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">cura</a>,
1621 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine">cura-engine</a>,
1622 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus">libarcus</a>,
1623 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials">fdm-materials</a>,
1624 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar">libsavitar</a> and
1625 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium">uranium</a>.  The last
1626 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday.  This should make
1627 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
1628 3D printers.  My nearest 3D printer is an Ultimaker 2+, so it will
1629 make life easier for at least me. :)</p>
1630
1631 <p>The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
1632 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages.  With the introduction
1633 of Cura, Debian is up to three 3D printer slicers at your service,
1634 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa.  If you own or have access to a 3D
1635 printer, give it a go. :)</p>
1636
1637 <p>The 3D printer software is maintained by the 3D printer Debian
1638 team, flocking together on the
1639 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general">3dprinter-general</a>
1640 mailing list and the
1641 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting">#debian-3dprinting</a>
1642 IRC channel.</p>
1643
1644 <p>The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
1645 version 3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
1646 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.</p>
1647
1648       </div>
1649       <div class="tags">
1650
1651
1652         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1653
1654
1655       </div>
1656     </div>
1657     <div class="padding"></div>
1658
1659     <div class="entry">
1660       <div class="title">
1661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</a>
1662       </div>
1663       <div class="date">
1664          9th October 2017
1665       </div>
1666       <div class="body">
1667         <p>At my nearby maker space,
1668 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
1669 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
1670 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
1671 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
1672 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
1673 as the software involved,
1674 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
1675 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
1676 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
1677 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
1678 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
1679 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
1680 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
1681
1682 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
1683 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
1684 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
1685 on
1686 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1687 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
1688
1689 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
1690 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
1691 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
1692 upstream version.</p>
1693
1694 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
1695 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
1696 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
1697 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
1698 Debian, check out
1699 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
1700 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
1701 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
1702
1703 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1704 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1705 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1706
1707       </div>
1708       <div class="tags">
1709
1710
1711         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1712
1713
1714       </div>
1715     </div>
1716     <div class="padding"></div>
1717
1718     <div class="entry">
1719       <div class="title">
1720         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</a>
1721       </div>
1722       <div class="date">
1723         29th September 2017
1724       </div>
1725       <div class="body">
1726         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
1727 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
1728 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
1729 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
1730 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
1731 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
1732 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
1733 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
1734 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
1735 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
1736 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
1737 listen.</p>
1738
1739 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
1740 visualizing this information up and running for
1741 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
1742 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
1743 library.  The solution is based on the
1744 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
1745 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
1746 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
1747 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
1748 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
1749 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
1750 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
1751 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
1752
1753 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
1754 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
1755 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
1756 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
1757 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
1758 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
1759 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
1760 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
1761
1762 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
1763 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
1764 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
1765 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
1766 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
1767 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
1768 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
1769 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
1770 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
1771 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
1772 mentioned in
1773 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
1774 issue for the topic</a>.
1775
1776 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
1777
1778       </div>
1779       <div class="tags">
1780
1781
1782         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1783
1784
1785       </div>
1786     </div>
1787     <div class="padding"></div>
1788
1789     <div class="entry">
1790       <div class="title">
1791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</a>
1792       </div>
1793       <div class="date">
1794         24th September 2017
1795       </div>
1796       <div class="body">
1797         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
1798 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
1799 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
1800 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
1801 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
1802 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
1803 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
1804 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
1805 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
1806
1807 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
1808 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
1809 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
1810 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
1811
1812 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
1813 clone of two python scripts:</p>
1814
1815 <ol>
1816
1817 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
1818   testing).</li>
1819
1820 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
1821   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
1822
1823 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
1824   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
1825
1826 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
1827
1828 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
1829   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
1830   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
1831
1832 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
1833   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
1834
1835 </ol>
1836
1837 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
1838 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
1839 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
1840 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
1841 very cheaply
1842 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
1843 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
1844 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
1845
1846 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
1847 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
1848 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
1849 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
1850 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
1851 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
1852 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
1853 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
1854
1855 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
1856 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
1857 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
1858 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
1859 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
1860 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
1861 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
1862 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
1863 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
1864 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
1865 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
1866 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
1867
1868       </div>
1869       <div class="tags">
1870
1871
1872         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1873
1874
1875       </div>
1876     </div>
1877     <div class="padding"></div>
1878
1879     <div class="entry">
1880       <div class="title">
1881         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a>
1882       </div>
1883       <div class="date">
1884          9th August 2017
1885       </div>
1886       <div class="body">
1887         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
1888 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
1889 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
1890 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
1891 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
1892 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
1893 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
1894
1895 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
1896 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
1897 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
1898 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
1899 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
1900 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
1901 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
1902 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
1903 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
1904 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
1905 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
1906 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
1907 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
1908
1909 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
1910 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
1911 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
1912 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
1913 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
1914 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
1915 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
1916 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
1917 collector for a few days now.</p>
1918
1919 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
1920
1921 <ol>
1922
1923 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
1924
1925 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
1926 <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>
1927
1928 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
1929
1930 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
1931 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
1932 found a GSM station).</li>
1933
1934 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
1935
1936 </ol>
1937
1938 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
1939 running, I decided to package
1940 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
1941 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
1942 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
1943 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
1944 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
1945
1946 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
1947 commercial tools like
1948 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
1949 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
1950 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
1951 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
1952 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
1953 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
1954 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
1955 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
1956 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
1957 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
1958 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
1959 of government officials...</p>
1960
1961 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
1962 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
1963 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
1964 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
1965 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
1966 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
1967 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
1968 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
1969 one frequency?</p>
1970
1971       </div>
1972       <div class="tags">
1973
1974
1975         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1976
1977
1978       </div>
1979     </div>
1980     <div class="padding"></div>
1981
1982     <div class="entry">
1983       <div class="title">
1984         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available</a>
1985       </div>
1986       <div class="date">
1987         25th July 2017
1988       </div>
1989       <div class="body">
1990         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
1991
1992 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
1993 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
1994 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
1995 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
1996 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
1997 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
1998 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
1999 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
2000 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
2001 as a web page</a>.</p>
2002
2003 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
2004 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
2005 in
2006 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
2007 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
2008 and
2009 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
2010 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
2011 project.  I hope
2012 "<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
2013 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
2014
2015       </div>
2016       <div class="tags">
2017
2018
2019         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2020
2021
2022       </div>
2023     </div>
2024     <div class="padding"></div>
2025
2026     <div class="entry">
2027       <div class="title">
2028         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</a>
2029       </div>
2030       <div class="date">
2031          3rd June 2017
2032       </div>
2033       <div class="body">
2034         <p><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html">Aftenposten
2035 melder i dag</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
2036 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
2037 like.  Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
2038 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
2039 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium</a> ville gjort en bedre
2040 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet.  Det kan se slik ut.</p>
2041
2042 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:</p>
2043
2044 <blockquote>
2045 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
2046 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
2047 for eksempel flykningekrisen.</p>
2048
2049 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
2050 på temaet:</p>
2051 <ol>
2052 <li>Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
2053 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
2054 </ol>
2055
2056 </blockquote>
2057
2058 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:</p>
2059
2060 <blockquote>
2061 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
2062 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
2063 til dømes *flykningekrisen.</p>
2064
2065 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
2066 temaet:</p>
2067
2068 <ol>
2069 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC</li>
2070 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015</li>
2071 </ol>
2072
2073 </blockquote>
2074
2075 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
2076 ekstra språksjekk.  Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
2077 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen.  Jeg mistenker dog at
2078 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
2079 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
2080 det er kanskje flisespikking.  Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
2081 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.</p>
2082
2083       </div>
2084       <div class="tags">
2085
2086
2087         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
2088
2089
2090       </div>
2091     </div>
2092     <div class="padding"></div>
2093
2094     <div class="entry">
2095       <div class="title">
2096         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
2097       </div>
2098       <div class="date">
2099          9th March 2017
2100       </div>
2101       <div class="body">
2102         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
2103 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
2104 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
2105 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
2106 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
2107 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
2108 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
2109 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
2110
2111 <p><blockquote>
2112 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
2113 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
2114 </blockquote></p>
2115
2116 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
2117 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
2118 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
2119 are noticed.</p>
2120
2121 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
2122 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
2123 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
2124 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
2125 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
2126 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
2127
2128 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
2129 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
2130 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
2131 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
2132 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
2133 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
2134
2135 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
2136
2137 <p><blockquote><pre>
2138 [...]
2139 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
2140 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
2141         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
2142         age:    7863311
2143         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
2144         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
2145         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
2146         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
2147         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
2148         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
2149         per-op statistics
2150                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2151              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
2152              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
2153               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
2154               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
2155             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
2156                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
2157                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
2158               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
2159                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
2160              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
2161                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
2162               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
2163                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
2164               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
2165                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
2166              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
2167          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
2168               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
2169               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
2170             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
2171               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2172
2173 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
2174 [...]
2175 </pre></blockquote></p>
2176
2177 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
2178 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
2179 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
2180 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
2181 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
2182 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
2183 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
2184 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
2185 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
2186 mount options.</p>
2187
2188 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
2189 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
2190 But according to
2191 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
2192 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
2193 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
2194 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
2195 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
2196 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
2197
2198 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
2199 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
2200 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
2201 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
2202 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
2203
2204       </div>
2205       <div class="tags">
2206
2207
2208         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2209
2210
2211       </div>
2212     </div>
2213     <div class="padding"></div>
2214
2215     <div class="entry">
2216       <div class="title">
2217         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</a>
2218       </div>
2219       <div class="date">
2220          3rd March 2017
2221       </div>
2222       <div class="body">
2223         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
2224 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
2225 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
2226 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
2227 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
2228 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
2229 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
2230 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
2231 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
2232
2233 <p><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
2234
2235 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
2236 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
2237 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
2238 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
2239 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
2240 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
2241 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
2242 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
2243
2244       </div>
2245       <div class="tags">
2246
2247
2248         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2249
2250
2251       </div>
2252     </div>
2253     <div class="padding"></div>
2254
2255     <div class="entry">
2256       <div class="title">
2257         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
2258       </div>
2259       <div class="date">
2260          1st March 2017
2261       </div>
2262       <div class="body">
2263         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
2264 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
2265 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
2266 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
2267 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
2268 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
2269 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
2270 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
2271 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
2272 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
2273 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
2274
2275 <blockquote><pre>
2276 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
2277   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
2278   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
2279      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
2280      sleep 1; \
2281   done
2282 300
2283 0+1 oppføringer inn
2284 0+1 oppføringer ut
2285 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
2286 4
2287 8
2288 12
2289 17
2290 21
2291 %
2292 </pre></blockquote>
2293
2294 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
2295 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
2296 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
2297 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
2298
2299 <blockquote><pre>
2300 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
2301   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
2302   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
2303      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
2304      sleep 1; \
2305   done
2306 1079
2307 0+1 oppføringer inn
2308 0+1 oppføringer ut
2309 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
2310 433
2311 1028
2312 1031
2313 1035
2314 1038
2315 %
2316 </pre></blockquote>
2317
2318 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
2319 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
2320
2321 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
2322 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
2323 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
2324 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
2325 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
2326 post.</p>
2327
2328       </div>
2329       <div class="tags">
2330
2331
2332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2333
2334
2335       </div>
2336     </div>
2337     <div class="padding"></div>
2338
2339     <div class="entry">
2340       <div class="title">
2341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
2342       </div>
2343       <div class="date">
2344          9th January 2017
2345       </div>
2346       <div class="body">
2347         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
2348 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
2349 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
2350 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
2351 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
2352 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
2353 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
2354 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
2355 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
2356 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
2357 this:
2358
2359 <p><pre>
2360 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
2361  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
2362  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
2363  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
2364  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
2365  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
2366  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
2367  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
2368  8  * * *
2369  9  * * *
2370 [...]
2371 </pre></p>
2372
2373 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
2374 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
2375 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
2376 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
2377 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
2378 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
2379 traceroute request.</p>
2380
2381 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
2382 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
2383 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
2384 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
2385 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
2386
2387 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
2388 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
2389 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
2390 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
2391 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
2392 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
2393 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
2394 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
2395 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
2396
2397 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
2398 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
2399 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
2400 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
2401 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
2402 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
2403 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
2404 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
2405 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
2406 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
2407 render the page (in HAR format using
2408 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
2409 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
2410 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
2411 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
2412 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
2413
2414 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
2415 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
2416
2417 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
2418 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
2419 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
2420 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
2421 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
2422 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
2423 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
2424 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
2425 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
2426 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
2427 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
2428 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
2429 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
2430 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
2431
2432 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
2433 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
2434
2435 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
2436 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
2437 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
2438 question.
2439 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
2440 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
2441 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
2442 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
2443 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
2444 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
2445 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
2446
2447 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
2448 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
2449
2450 <p>In the process, I came across the
2451 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
2452 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
2453 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
2454 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
2455 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
2456 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
2457 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
2458 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
2459 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
2460 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
2461 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
2462 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
2463 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
2464 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
2465
2466 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
2467 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
2468
2469 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
2470 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
2471 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
2472 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
2473
2474 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
2475 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
2476 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
2477 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
2478 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
2479 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
2480 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
2481
2482 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
2483 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
2484 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
2485 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
2486 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
2487 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
2488 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
2489
2490 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
2491 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
2492 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
2493 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
2494
2495 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2496 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2497 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2498
2499       </div>
2500       <div class="tags">
2501
2502
2503         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2504
2505
2506       </div>
2507     </div>
2508     <div class="padding"></div>
2509
2510     <div class="entry">
2511       <div class="title">
2512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
2513       </div>
2514       <div class="date">
2515         23rd December 2016
2516       </div>
2517       <div class="body">
2518         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
2519 readers probably know, I have been working on the
2520 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
2521 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
2522 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
2523 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
2524 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
2525 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
2526 metadata format.  And today,
2527 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
2528 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
2529 ie using fnmatch():</p>
2530
2531 <p><pre>
2532 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
2533   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
2534 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
2535 Name: pymissile
2536 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
2537 Package: pymissile
2538 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
2539 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
2540 Name: libnxt
2541 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
2542 Package: libnxt
2543 ---
2544 Identifier: t2n [generic]
2545 Name: t2n
2546 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
2547 Package: t2n
2548 ---
2549 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
2550 Name: python-nxt
2551 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
2552 Package: python-nxt
2553 ---
2554 Identifier: nbc [generic]
2555 Name: nbc
2556 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
2557 Package: nbc
2558 %
2559 </pre></p>
2560
2561 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
2562 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
2563
2564 <p><pre>
2565 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
2566 pymissile
2567 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
2568 libnxt
2569 nbc
2570 python-nxt
2571 t2n
2572 %
2573 </pre></p>
2574
2575 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
2576 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
2577
2578 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
2579 make the most of the hardware they have, please
2580 help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
2581 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
2582 documented in the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such
2583 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
2584 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
2585 mostly related to USB dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware
2586 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
2587 part of my involvement in
2588 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
2589 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
2590 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
2591 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
2592 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
2593 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
2594 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
2595 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
2596 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
2597
2598 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2599 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2600 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2601
2602       </div>
2603       <div class="tags">
2604
2605
2606         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2607
2608
2609       </div>
2610     </div>
2611     <div class="padding"></div>
2612
2613     <div class="entry">
2614       <div class="title">
2615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
2616       </div>
2617       <div class="date">
2618         20th December 2016
2619       </div>
2620       <div class="body">
2621         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2622 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
2623 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
2624 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
2625 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
2626 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
2627 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
2628 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
2629 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
2630 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
2631
2632 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
2633
2634 <p><pre>
2635 % isenkram-lookup
2636 bluez
2637 cheese
2638 ethtool
2639 fprintd
2640 fprintd-demo
2641 gkrellm-thinkbat
2642 hdapsd
2643 libpam-fprintd
2644 pidgin-blinklight
2645 thinkfan
2646 tlp
2647 tp-smapi-dkms
2648 tp-smapi-source
2649 tpb
2650 %
2651 </pre></p>
2652
2653 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
2654 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
2655 I have all the firmware my machine need:
2656
2657 <p><pre>
2658 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2659 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
2660 %
2661 </pre></p>
2662
2663 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
2664 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
2665 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
2666 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
2667 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
2668 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
2669 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
2670 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
2671
2672 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
2673 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
2674 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
2675
2676 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
2677 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
2678 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
2679 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
2680 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
2681 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
2682 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
2683 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
2684 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
2685 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
2686 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
2687 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
2688 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
2689 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
2690 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
2691 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
2692 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
2693 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
2694 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
2695 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
2696 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
2697 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
2698 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
2699 zd1211-firmware</p>
2700
2701 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
2702 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
2703 maintainer to
2704 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
2705 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
2706 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
2707 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
2708
2709 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
2710 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
2711 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
2712 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
2713 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
2714
2715       </div>
2716       <div class="tags">
2717
2718
2719         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2720
2721
2722       </div>
2723     </div>
2724     <div class="padding"></div>
2725
2726     <div class="entry">
2727       <div class="title">
2728         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
2729       </div>
2730       <div class="date">
2731         11th December 2016
2732       </div>
2733       <div class="body">
2734         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
2735
2736 <p>In my early years, I played
2737 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
2738 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
2739 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
2740 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
2741 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
2742 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
2743 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
2744 small.</p>
2745
2746 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
2747 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
2748 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
2749 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
2750 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
2751 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
2752 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
2753 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
2754 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
2755
2756 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
2757 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
2758 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
2759 advantages of the
2760 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
2761 where information about each planet is easily available with common
2762 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
2763 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
2764 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
2765 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
2766 after less then a week.</p>
2767
2768 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
2769 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
2770 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
2771
2772 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2773 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2774 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2775
2776       </div>
2777       <div class="tags">
2778
2779
2780         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2781
2782
2783       </div>
2784     </div>
2785     <div class="padding"></div>
2786
2787     <div class="entry">
2788       <div class="title">
2789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
2790       </div>
2791       <div class="date">
2792         25th November 2016
2793       </div>
2794       <div class="body">
2795         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
2796 installation system, observing how using
2797 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
2798 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
2799 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
2800 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
2801 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
2802 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
2803 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
2804 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
2805 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
2806 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
2807 up the process make perfect sense.
2808
2809 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
2810 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
2811 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
2812 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
2813 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
2814 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
2815 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
2816 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
2817 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
2818 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
2819
2820 <blockquote><pre>
2821 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
2822 </pre></blockquote>
2823
2824 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
2825 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
2826 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
2827 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
2828 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
2829 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
2830 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
2831 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
2832 tested its impact.</p>
2833
2834
2835       </div>
2836       <div class="tags">
2837
2838
2839         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2840
2841
2842       </div>
2843     </div>
2844     <div class="padding"></div>
2845
2846     <div class="entry">
2847       <div class="title">
2848         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</a>
2849       </div>
2850       <div class="date">
2851         24th November 2016
2852       </div>
2853       <div class="body">
2854         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
2855 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
2856 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
2857 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
2858 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
2859 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
2860 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
2861 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
2862 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
2863 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
2864 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
2865 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
2866 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
2867 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
2868 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
2869 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
2870 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
2871 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
2872 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
2873
2874 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
2875 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
2876 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
2877 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
2878 api.apertium.org.  Se
2879 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
2880 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
2881 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
2882 nynorsk.</p>
2883
2884 <hr/>
2885
2886 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
2887 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
2888 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
2889 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
2890 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
2891 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
2892 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
2893 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
2894 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
2895 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
2896 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
2897 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
2898 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
2899 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
2900 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
2901 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
2902 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
2903 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
2904 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
2905
2906 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
2907 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
2908 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
2909 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
2910 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
2911 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
2912 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
2913 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
2914 nynorsk.</p>
2915
2916       </div>
2917       <div class="tags">
2918
2919
2920         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
2921
2922
2923       </div>
2924     </div>
2925     <div class="padding"></div>
2926
2927     <div class="entry">
2928       <div class="title">
2929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
2930       </div>
2931       <div class="date">
2932         13th November 2016
2933       </div>
2934       <div class="body">
2935         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
2936 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
2937 multi-threaded program, finally
2938 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
2939 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
2940 months since
2941 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
2942 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
2943 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
2944 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
2945 JavaScript libraries.</p>
2946
2947 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
2948
2949 <p><blockquote>
2950 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
2951 </blockquote></p>
2952
2953 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
2954 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
2955 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
2956 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
2957 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
2958
2959 <p><blockquote>
2960 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
2961 </blockquote></p>
2962
2963 <p>See the project home page and the
2964 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
2965 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
2966 working.</p>
2967
2968       </div>
2969       <div class="tags">
2970
2971
2972         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2973
2974
2975       </div>
2976     </div>
2977     <div class="padding"></div>
2978
2979     <div class="entry">
2980       <div class="title">
2981         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
2982       </div>
2983       <div class="date">
2984          4th November 2016
2985       </div>
2986       <div class="body">
2987         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
2988 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
2989 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
2990 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
2991 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
2992 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
2993 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
2994 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
2995 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
2996 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
2997 and had
2998 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
2999 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
3000 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
3001 loved ones. :)</p>
3002
3003 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
3004 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
3005 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
3006 building
3007 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
3008 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
3009 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
3010 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
3011 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
3012 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
3013 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
3014 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
3015
3016 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
3017
3018 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
3019 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
3020 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
3021 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
3022 the battery status run low:</p>
3023
3024 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
3025    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
3026 </video></p>
3027
3028 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
3029 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
3030
3031 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
3032 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
3033 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
3034 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
3035 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
3036 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
3037 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
3038 should.</p>
3039
3040       </div>
3041       <div class="tags">
3042
3043
3044         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
3045
3046
3047       </div>
3048     </div>
3049     <div class="padding"></div>
3050
3051     <div class="entry">
3052       <div class="title">
3053         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
3054       </div>
3055       <div class="date">
3056         10th October 2016
3057       </div>
3058       <div class="body">
3059         <p>In July
3060 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
3061 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
3062 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
3063 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
3064
3065 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
3066 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
3067 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
3068 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
3069 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
3070 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
3071 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
3072 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
3073 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
3074 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
3075 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
3076 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
3077 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
3078 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
3079 time.</p>
3080
3081 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
3082 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
3083 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
3084 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
3085 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
3086 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
3087 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
3088
3089 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
3090 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
3091 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
3092 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
3093 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
3094 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
3095 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
3096 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
3097 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
3098 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
3099
3100 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
3101
3102 <ol>
3103
3104 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
3105 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
3106 know, so you need to install it.
3107
3108 <pre>
3109 apt install git tor chromium
3110 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
3111 </pre></li>
3112
3113 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
3114 block below.</li>
3115
3116 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
3117 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
3118
3119 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
3120 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
3121 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
3122 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
3123 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
3124
3125 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
3126 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
3127 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
3128 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
3129 a associated contact database.</li>
3130
3131 </ol>
3132
3133 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
3134 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
3135 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
3136 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
3137 example
3138 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
3139 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
3140 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
3141 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
3142 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
3143 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
3144 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
3145 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
3146 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
3147 working on Debian Stable.</p>
3148
3149 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
3150 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
3151 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
3152
3153 <pre>
3154 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
3155 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
3156 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
3157 --- a/js/background.js
3158 +++ b/js/background.js
3159 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
3160          });
3161      });
3162
3163 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
3164 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
3165      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
3166 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
3167 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
3168      var messageReceiver;
3169      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
3170          if (messageReceiver) {
3171 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
3172 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
3173 --- a/js/expire.js
3174 +++ b/js/expire.js
3175 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
3176  ;(function() {
3177      'use strict';
3178 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
3179 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
3180
3181      window.extension = window.extension || {};
3182
3183 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
3184 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
3185 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
3186 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
3187 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
3188              return {
3189                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
3190                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
3191 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
3192 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
3193 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
3194              };
3195          },
3196          clearQR: function() {
3197 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
3198 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
3199 --- a/options.html
3200 +++ b/options.html
3201 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
3202          &lt;div class='nav'>
3203            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
3204            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
3205 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
3206 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
3207 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
3208 +
3209 +         &lt;/div>
3210            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
3211            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
3212            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
3213 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
3214 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
3215 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
3216 +#!/bin/sh
3217 +set -e
3218 +cd $(dirname $0)
3219 +mkdir -p userdata
3220 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
3221 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
3222 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
3223 +fi
3224 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
3225 +exec chromium \
3226 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
3227 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
3228 EOF
3229 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
3230 </pre>
3231
3232 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3233 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3234 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3235
3236       </div>
3237       <div class="tags">
3238
3239
3240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3241
3242
3243       </div>
3244     </div>
3245     <div class="padding"></div>
3246
3247     <div class="entry">
3248       <div class="title">
3249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
3250       </div>
3251       <div class="date">
3252          7th October 2016
3253       </div>
3254       <div class="body">
3255         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
3256 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
3257 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
3258 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
3259 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
3260 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
3261 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
3262 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
3263 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
3264 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
3265 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
3266 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
3267 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
3268
3269 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
3270 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
3271 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
3272 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
3273 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
3274 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
3275
3276 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
3277 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
3278 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
3279 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
3280 identifiers.</p>
3281
3282 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
3283 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
3284 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
3285 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
3286 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
3287 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
3288 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
3289 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
3290 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
3291 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
3292 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
3293 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
3294 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
3295 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
3296
3297 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
3298 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
3299 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
3300 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
3301 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
3302 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
3303 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
3304
3305 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
3306 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
3307 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
3308 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
3309 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
3310 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
3311 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
3312 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
3313 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
3314 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
3315 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
3316 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
3317 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
3318 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
3319 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
3320 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
3321 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
3322
3323 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
3324 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
3325 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
3326 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
3327 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
3328 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
3329 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
3330
3331 <p><pre>
3332 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
3333     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
3334 </pre></p>
3335
3336 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
3337 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
3338 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
3339 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
3340 to detect this?</p>
3341
3342 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
3343 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
3344 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
3345 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
3346 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
3347 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
3348 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
3349 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
3350 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
3351 directly if no such class exist.</p>
3352
3353 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
3354 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
3355 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
3356
3357 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
3358 please join us on our IRC channel
3359 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
3360 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
3361 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
3362 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
3363
3364 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3365 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3366 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3367
3368       </div>
3369       <div class="tags">
3370
3371
3372         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>.
3373
3374
3375       </div>
3376     </div>
3377     <div class="padding"></div>
3378
3379     <div class="entry">
3380       <div class="title">
3381         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
3382       </div>
3383       <div class="date">
3384         30th August 2016
3385       </div>
3386       <div class="body">
3387         <p>In April we
3388 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
3389 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
3390 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
3391 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
3392 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
3393 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
3394 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
3395 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
3396 contributing using
3397 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
3398 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
3399 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
3400 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
3401 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
3402 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
3403 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
3404
3405 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
3406 electronic form.</p>
3407
3408       </div>
3409       <div class="tags">
3410
3411
3412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3413
3414
3415       </div>
3416     </div>
3417     <div class="padding"></div>
3418
3419     <div class="entry">
3420       <div class="title">
3421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
3422       </div>
3423       <div class="date">
3424         11th August 2016
3425       </div>
3426       <div class="body">
3427         <p>This summer, I read a great article
3428 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
3429 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
3430 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
3431 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
3432 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
3433 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
3434 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
3435 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
3436 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
3437 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
3438 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
3439 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
3440
3441 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
3442 get the system into Debian.  I
3443 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
3444 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
3445 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
3446 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
3447 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
3448 profiling information included in the source package.
3449 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
3450
3451 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
3452 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
3453
3454 <p><blockquote><pre>
3455 coz run --- program-to-run
3456 </pre></blockquote></p>
3457
3458 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
3459 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
3460 most, use a web browser and either point it to
3461 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
3462 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
3463 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
3464 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
3465 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
3466 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
3467 targeted experiments.</p>
3468
3469 <p>A video published by ACM
3470 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
3471 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
3472 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
3473 titled
3474 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
3475 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
3476
3477 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
3478 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
3479 because it uses a
3480 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
3481 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
3482 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
3483 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
3484
3485 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
3486 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
3487 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
3488 C++ libraries.</p>
3489
3490       </div>
3491       <div class="tags">
3492
3493
3494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3495
3496
3497       </div>
3498     </div>
3499     <div class="padding"></div>
3500
3501     <div class="entry">
3502       <div class="title">
3503         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
3504       </div>
3505       <div class="date">
3506          7th July 2016
3507       </div>
3508       <div class="body">
3509         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
3510 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
3511 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
3512 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
3513 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
3514 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
3515 microphone The initial idea had been to just
3516 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
3517 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
3518 until a few days ago.</p>
3519
3520 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
3521 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
3522 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
3523 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
3524 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
3525 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
3526 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
3527
3528 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
3529 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
3530 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
3531 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
3532 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
3533 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
3534 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
3535 him.</p>
3536
3537 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
3538 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
3539 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
3540 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
3541 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
3542 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
3543 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
3544 devices it would work for.</p>
3545
3546 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
3547 followed some instructions
3548 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
3549 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
3550 machine with Debian testing:</p>
3551
3552 <p><pre>
3553 adb reboot-bootloader
3554 fastboot oem rebootRUU
3555 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
3556 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
3557 fastboot reboot
3558 </pre></p>
3559
3560 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
3561 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
3562 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
3563 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
3564 too.</p>
3565
3566 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
3567 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
3568 like this:</p>
3569
3570 <p><pre>
3571 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
3572 </pre>
3573
3574 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
3575 this:</p>
3576
3577 <p><pre>
3578 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
3579 </pre></p>
3580
3581 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
3582 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
3583 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
3584 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
3585 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
3586
3587       </div>
3588       <div class="tags">
3589
3590
3591         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3592
3593
3594       </div>
3595     </div>
3596     <div class="padding"></div>
3597
3598     <div class="entry">
3599       <div class="title">
3600         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
3601       </div>
3602       <div class="date">
3603          3rd July 2016
3604       </div>
3605       <div class="body">
3606         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
3607 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
3608 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
3609 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
3610 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
3611 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
3612 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
3613 Github source, compared it to the source in
3614 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
3615 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
3616 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
3617 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
3618 the recipe how I did it.</p>
3619
3620 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
3621
3622 <pre>
3623 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
3624 </pre>
3625
3626 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
3627 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
3628
3629 <pre>
3630 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
3631 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
3632 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
3633 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
3634 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
3635          });
3636      });
3637
3638 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
3639 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
3640 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
3641 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
3642      var messageReceiver;
3643      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
3644          if (messageReceiver) {
3645 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
3646 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
3647 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
3648 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
3649  ;(function() {
3650      'use strict';
3651 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
3652 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
3653
3654      window.extension = window.extension || {};
3655
3656 EOF
3657 </pre>
3658
3659 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
3660 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
3661 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
3662 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
3663
3664 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
3665 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
3666
3667 <pre>
3668 #!/bin/sh
3669 cd $(dirname $0)
3670 mkdir -p userdata
3671 exec chromium \
3672   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
3673   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
3674 </pre>
3675
3676 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
3677 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
3678 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
3679 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
3680 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
3681
3682 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
3683 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
3684 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
3685 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
3686 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
3687 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
3688 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
3689 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
3690 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
3691 Signal from my laptop.
3692
3693 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
3694 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
3695 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
3696 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
3697 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
3698 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
3699 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
3700 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
3701 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
3702 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
3703 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
3704 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
3705
3706 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
3707 on this topic in
3708 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
3709 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
3710 phone</a>.</p>
3711
3712       </div>
3713       <div class="tags">
3714
3715
3716         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3717
3718
3719       </div>
3720     </div>
3721     <div class="padding"></div>
3722
3723     <div class="entry">
3724       <div class="title">
3725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
3726       </div>
3727       <div class="date">
3728          6th June 2016
3729       </div>
3730       <div class="body">
3731         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
3732 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
3733 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
3734 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
3735 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
3736 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
3737 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
3738 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
3739 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
3740
3741 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
3742 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
3743 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
3744 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
3745 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
3746 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
3747 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
3748
3749 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
3750 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
3751 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
3752 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
3753 toten and parole.</p>
3754
3755 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
3756 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
3757 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
3758 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
3759 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
3760 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
3761 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
3762 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
3763 formats.</p>
3764
3765       </div>
3766       <div class="tags">
3767
3768
3769         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3770
3771
3772       </div>
3773     </div>
3774     <div class="padding"></div>
3775
3776     <div class="entry">
3777       <div class="title">
3778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
3779       </div>
3780       <div class="date">
3781          5th June 2016
3782       </div>
3783       <div class="body">
3784         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
3785 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
3786 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
3787 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
3788 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
3789 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
3790 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
3791 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
3792 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
3793 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
3794 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
3795 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
3796 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
3797 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
3798 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
3799 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
3800 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
3801 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
3802 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
3803 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
3804
3805 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
3806 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
3807 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
3808 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
3809 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
3810 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
3811 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
3812 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
3813 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
3814 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
3815 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
3816 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
3817 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
3818 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
3819
3820 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
3821 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
3822 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
3823 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
3824 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
3825 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
3826 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
3827 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
3828
3829 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
3830 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
3831 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
3832 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
3833 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
3834 information is collected from
3835 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
3836 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
3837 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
3838 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
3839 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
3840 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
3841 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
3842 type (preferably
3843 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
3844 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
3845 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
3846 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
3847
3848 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
3849 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
3850 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
3851
3852 <p><blockquote><pre>
3853 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
3854 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
3855   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
3856     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
3857     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
3858     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
3859   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
3860 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
3861 </pre></blockquote></p>
3862
3863 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
3864 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
3865 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
3866 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
3867
3868 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
3869 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
3870 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
3871
3872 <p><blockquote><pre>
3873 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
3874 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
3875 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
3876 %
3877 </pre></blockquote></p>
3878
3879 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
3880 MimeType= line.</p>
3881
3882 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
3883 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
3884 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
3885 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
3886 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
3887 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
3888 fixed. :)</p>
3889
3890       </div>
3891       <div class="tags">
3892
3893
3894         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3895
3896
3897       </div>
3898     </div>
3899     <div class="padding"></div>
3900
3901     <div class="entry">
3902       <div class="title">
3903         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
3904       </div>
3905       <div class="date">
3906         25th May 2016
3907       </div>
3908       <div class="body">
3909         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
3910 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
3911 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
3912 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
3913 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
3914 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
3915 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
3916 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
3917 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
3918 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
3919 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
3920 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
3921
3922 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
3923 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
3924 is going away and is generally being replaced by
3925 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
3926 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
3927 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
3928 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
3929 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
3930 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
3931 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
3932 and see if it is recognised.</p>
3933
3934 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
3935 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
3936 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
3937
3938 <p><blockquote><pre>
3939 % isenkram-lookup
3940 bluez
3941 cheese
3942 fprintd
3943 fprintd-demo
3944 gkrellm-thinkbat
3945 hdapsd
3946 libpam-fprintd
3947 pidgin-blinklight
3948 thinkfan
3949 tleds
3950 tp-smapi-dkms
3951 tp-smapi-source
3952 tpb
3953 %p
3954 </pre></blockquote></p>
3955
3956 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
3957 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
3958 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
3959 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
3960 See
3961 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
3962 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
3963
3964       </div>
3965       <div class="tags">
3966
3967
3968         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3969
3970
3971       </div>
3972     </div>
3973     <div class="padding"></div>
3974
3975     <div class="entry">
3976       <div class="title">
3977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
3978       </div>
3979       <div class="date">
3980         23rd May 2016
3981       </div>
3982       <div class="body">
3983         <p>Yesterday I updated the
3984 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
3985 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
3986 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
3987 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
3988 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
3989 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
3990 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
3991 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
3992 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
3993 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
3994
3995 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
3996 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
3997 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
3998 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
3999 capacity.</p>
4000
4001 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
4002
4003 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
4004 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
4005 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
4006 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
4007
4008 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
4009
4010 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
4011 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
4012 shrinking. :(</p>
4013
4014 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
4015 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
4016 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
4017 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
4018 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
4019 machine.</p>
4020
4021 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
4022 check out the
4023 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
4024 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
4025 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
4026 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
4027 Patches are very welcome.</p>
4028
4029 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4030 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4031 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4032
4033       </div>
4034       <div class="tags">
4035
4036
4037         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4038
4039
4040       </div>
4041     </div>
4042     <div class="padding"></div>
4043
4044     <div class="entry">
4045       <div class="title">
4046         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
4047       </div>
4048       <div class="date">
4049         12th May 2016
4050       </div>
4051       <div class="body">
4052         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
4053 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
4054 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
4055 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
4056 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
4057 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4058 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
4059 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
4060 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
4061 great if you could help out with
4062 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
4063 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
4064
4065       </div>
4066       <div class="tags">
4067
4068
4069         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4070
4071
4072       </div>
4073     </div>
4074     <div class="padding"></div>
4075
4076     <div class="entry">
4077       <div class="title">
4078         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
4079       </div>
4080       <div class="date">
4081          8th May 2016
4082       </div>
4083       <div class="body">
4084         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
4085 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
4086
4087 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
4088 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
4089 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
4090 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
4091 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
4092 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
4093 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
4094 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
4095 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
4096 players.</p>
4097
4098 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
4099 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
4100 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
4101 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
4102 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
4103 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
4104 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
4105 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
4106 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
4107 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
4108 support most file formats.</p>
4109
4110 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
4111 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
4112 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
4113 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
4114 listed first in the table.</p>
4115
4116 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
4117 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
4118 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
4119 support?</p>
4120
4121       </div>
4122       <div class="tags">
4123
4124
4125         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4126
4127
4128       </div>
4129     </div>
4130     <div class="padding"></div>
4131
4132     <div class="entry">
4133       <div class="title">
4134         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
4135       </div>
4136       <div class="date">
4137          4th May 2016
4138       </div>
4139       <div class="body">
4140         A friend of mine made me aware of
4141 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
4142 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
4143 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
4144
4145 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
4146 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
4147 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
4148 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
4149 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
4150 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
4151 production started.</p>
4152
4153 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
4154 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
4155 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
4156
4157       </div>
4158       <div class="tags">
4159
4160
4161         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4162
4163
4164       </div>
4165     </div>
4166     <div class="padding"></div>
4167
4168     <div class="entry">
4169       <div class="title">
4170         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
4171       </div>
4172       <div class="date">
4173         10th April 2016
4174       </div>
4175       <div class="body">
4176         <p>During this weekends
4177 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
4178 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
4179 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
4180 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
4181 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
4182 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
4183 contributing using
4184 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
4185 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
4186 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
4187 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
4188 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
4189 contributors</a>.</p>
4190
4191 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
4192 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
4193 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
4194 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
4195 available for many more languages.</p>
4196
4197       </div>
4198       <div class="tags">
4199
4200
4201         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4202
4203
4204       </div>
4205     </div>
4206     <div class="padding"></div>
4207
4208     <div class="entry">
4209       <div class="title">
4210         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
4211       </div>
4212       <div class="date">
4213          7th April 2016
4214       </div>
4215       <div class="body">
4216         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
4217 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
4218 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
4219 But I might be wrong.</p>
4220
4221 <p>According to
4222 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
4223 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
4224 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
4225 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
4226 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
4227 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
4228 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
4229 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
4230 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
4231 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
4232
4233 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
4234 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
4235 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
4236 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
4237 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
4238 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
4239 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
4240 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4241 team status page</a>, and
4242 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
4243 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
4244
4245 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
4246 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
4247 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
4248 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
4249 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
4250 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
4251 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
4252 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
4253 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
4254 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
4255 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
4256 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
4257
4258       </div>
4259       <div class="tags">
4260
4261
4262         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4263
4264
4265       </div>
4266     </div>
4267     <div class="padding"></div>
4268
4269     <div class="entry">
4270       <div class="title">
4271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
4272       </div>
4273       <div class="date">
4274         23rd March 2016
4275       </div>
4276       <div class="body">
4277         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
4278 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
4279 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
4280 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
4281 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
4282 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
4283 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
4284 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
4285
4286 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
4287 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
4288 and lifetime prediction by running:
4289
4290 <p><pre>
4291 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
4292 </pre></p>
4293
4294 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
4295
4296 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
4297 entry yet):</p>
4298
4299 <p><pre>
4300 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
4301 </pre></p>
4302
4303 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
4304 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
4305 few years of data.</p>
4306
4307 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
4308 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
4309 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
4310 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
4311 know.  The issue is reported as
4312 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
4313 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
4314 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
4315 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
4316 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
4317
4318 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
4319 check out the
4320 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
4321 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
4322 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
4323 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
4324 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
4325
4326       </div>
4327       <div class="tags">
4328
4329
4330         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4331
4332
4333       </div>
4334     </div>
4335     <div class="padding"></div>
4336
4337     <div class="entry">
4338       <div class="title">
4339         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
4340       </div>
4341       <div class="date">
4342         15th March 2016
4343       </div>
4344       <div class="body">
4345         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
4346 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
4347 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
4348 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
4349 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
4350 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
4351 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
4352 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
4353 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
4354 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
4355 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
4356
4357 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
4358 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
4359 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
4360 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
4361 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
4362 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
4363 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
4364 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
4365 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
4366 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
4367 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
4368
4369 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
4370
4371 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
4372 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
4373 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
4374 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
4375 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
4376 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
4377
4378 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
4379 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
4380 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
4381 and graphing.</p>
4382
4383 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
4384 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
4385 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
4386 on
4387 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
4388 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
4389
4390       </div>
4391       <div class="tags">
4392
4393
4394         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4395
4396
4397       </div>
4398     </div>
4399     <div class="padding"></div>
4400
4401     <div class="entry">
4402       <div class="title">
4403         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
4404       </div>
4405       <div class="date">
4406         19th February 2016
4407       </div>
4408       <div class="body">
4409         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
4410 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
4411 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
4412 the code in the package in question, preferably in
4413 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
4414 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
4415
4416 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
4417 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
4418 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
4419 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
4420 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
4421 out what was wrong with
4422 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
4423 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
4424 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
4425 semi-automatically.</p>
4426
4427 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
4428 file based on the code in the source package,
4429 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
4430 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
4431 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
4432 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
4433 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
4434 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
4435 option in
4436 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
4437 blog posts from 2014</a>.
4438
4439 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
4440
4441 <p><pre>
4442 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
4443 </pre></p>
4444
4445 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
4446 this might not be the best option.</p>
4447
4448 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
4449 this approach in
4450 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
4451 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
4452 dpkg-copyright' option:
4453
4454 <p><pre>
4455 cme update dpkg-copyright
4456 </pre></p>
4457
4458 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
4459 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
4460
4461 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
4462 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
4463 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
4464 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
4465 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
4466 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
4467 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
4468 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
4469 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
4470 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
4471
4472 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
4473 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
4474 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
4475 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
4476
4477 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
4478 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
4479 planet.debian.org.</p>
4480
4481 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4482 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4483 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4484
4485 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
4486 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
4487
4488 <p><pre>
4489 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
4490   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
4491 </pre></p>
4492
4493 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
4494 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
4495 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
4496 with my packages in the future.</p>
4497
4498 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
4499 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
4500 command line.</p>
4501
4502       </div>
4503       <div class="tags">
4504
4505
4506         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4507
4508
4509       </div>
4510     </div>
4511     <div class="padding"></div>
4512
4513     <div class="entry">
4514       <div class="title">
4515         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
4516       </div>
4517       <div class="date">
4518          4th February 2016
4519       </div>
4520       <div class="body">
4521         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
4522 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
4523 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
4524 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
4525 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
4526 about. :)</p>
4527
4528 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
4529 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
4530 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
4531 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
4532 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
4533 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
4534
4535 <blockquote><pre>
4536 % apt install appstream
4537 [...]
4538 % apt update
4539 [...]
4540 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
4541   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
4542 firmware-qlogic
4543 %
4544 </pre></blockquote>
4545
4546 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
4547 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
4548 a way appstream can use.</p>
4549
4550 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
4551 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
4552 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
4553 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
4554 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
4555 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
4556
4557 <blockquote><pre>
4558 % apt install appstream
4559 [...]
4560 % apt update
4561 [...]
4562 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
4563   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
4564 bkchem
4565 phototonic
4566 inkscape
4567 shutter
4568 tetzle
4569 geeqie
4570 xia
4571 pinta
4572 gthumb
4573 karbon
4574 comix
4575 mirage
4576 viewnior
4577 postr
4578 ristretto
4579 kolourpaint4
4580 eog
4581 eom
4582 gimagereader
4583 midori
4584 %
4585 </pre></blockquote>
4586
4587 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
4588 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
4589
4590       </div>
4591       <div class="tags">
4592
4593
4594         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4595
4596
4597       </div>
4598     </div>
4599     <div class="padding"></div>
4600
4601     <div class="entry">
4602       <div class="title">
4603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
4604       </div>
4605       <div class="date">
4606         24th January 2016
4607       </div>
4608       <div class="body">
4609         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
4610 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
4611 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
4612 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
4613 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
4614 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
4615 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
4616 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
4617 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
4618 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
4619 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
4620 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
4621 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
4622 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
4623 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
4624 entities.</p>
4625
4626 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
4627
4628 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
4629 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
4630 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
4631 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
4632 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
4633 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
4634 tool to do so is called
4635 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
4636 discovered it when I read
4637 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
4638 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
4639 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
4640 The python program was in Debian, but
4641 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
4642 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
4643 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
4644 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
4645 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
4646 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
4647 are now included
4648 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
4649
4650 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
4651 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
4652 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
4653 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
4654 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
4655 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
4656 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
4657 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
4658 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
4659 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
4660 about yourself with the services.</p>
4661
4662 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
4663 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
4664 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
4665 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
4666 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
4667 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
4668 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
4669 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
4670 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
4671 things.  A similar technique have been
4672 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
4673 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
4674 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
4675 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
4676 public.</p>
4677
4678 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
4679 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
4680 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
4681 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
4682
4683 <p>(I have uploaded
4684 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
4685 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
4686 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
4687
4688       </div>
4689       <div class="tags">
4690
4691
4692         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4693
4694
4695       </div>
4696     </div>
4697     <div class="padding"></div>
4698
4699     <div class="entry">
4700       <div class="title">
4701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
4702       </div>
4703       <div class="date">
4704         15th January 2016
4705       </div>
4706       <div class="body">
4707         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
4708 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
4709 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
4710 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
4711 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
4712 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
4713 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
4714 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
4715 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
4716 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
4717 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
4718 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
4719 was not the first to propose this, as the
4720 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
4721 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
4722 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
4723 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
4724
4725 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
4726 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
4727 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
4728 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
4729 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
4730
4731 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
4732 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
4733 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
4734 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
4735 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
4736 done in /etc/.</p>
4737
4738 <blockquote><pre>
4739 apt install apt-transport-tor
4740 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
4741 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
4742 </pre></blockquote>
4743
4744 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
4745 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
4746 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
4747 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
4748
4749 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
4750 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
4751 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
4752 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
4753 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
4754 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
4755
4756 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
4757 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
4758 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
4759 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
4760 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
4761
4762 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
4763 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
4764 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
4765 system.</p>
4766
4767       </div>
4768       <div class="tags">
4769
4770
4771         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4772
4773
4774       </div>
4775     </div>
4776     <div class="padding"></div>
4777
4778     <div class="entry">
4779       <div class="title">
4780         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
4781       </div>
4782       <div class="date">
4783         23rd December 2015
4784       </div>
4785       <div class="body">
4786         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
4787 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
4788 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
4789 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
4790 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
4791 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
4792
4793 <p>A few days I came across
4794 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
4795 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
4796 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
4797 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
4798 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
4799 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
4800 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
4801 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
4802 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
4803 discovered the developer
4804 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
4805 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
4806 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
4807 archive.</p>
4808
4809 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
4810 it into Debian, where it currently
4811 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
4812 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
4813
4814 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
4815 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
4816 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
4817 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
4818 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
4819 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
4820 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
4821 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
4822 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
4823 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
4824 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
4825 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
4826
4827 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
4828 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
4829 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
4830 package show up in unstable.</p>
4831
4832       </div>
4833       <div class="tags">
4834
4835
4836         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4837
4838
4839       </div>
4840     </div>
4841     <div class="padding"></div>
4842
4843     <div class="entry">
4844       <div class="title">
4845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
4846       </div>
4847       <div class="date">
4848         20th December 2015
4849       </div>
4850       <div class="body">
4851         <p>Around three years ago, I created
4852 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
4853 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
4854 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
4855 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
4856 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
4857 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
4858 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
4859 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
4860 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
4861 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
4862 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
4863 with.</p>
4864
4865 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
4866 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
4867 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
4868 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
4869 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
4870 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
4871 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
4872 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
4873 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
4874 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
4875 Debian version of appstream.</p>
4876
4877 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
4878 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
4879 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
4880 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
4881 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
4882 how do add the required
4883 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
4884 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
4885 this content:</p>
4886
4887 <blockquote><pre>
4888 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
4889 &lt;component&gt;
4890   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
4891   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
4892   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
4893   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
4894   &lt;description&gt;
4895     &lt;p&gt;
4896       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
4897       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
4898       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
4899       launcher.
4900     &lt;/p&gt;
4901   &lt;/description&gt;
4902   &lt;provides&gt;
4903     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
4904   &lt;/provides&gt;
4905 &lt;/component&gt;
4906 </pre></blockquote>
4907
4908 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
4909 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
4910 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
4911 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
4912 0202.</p>
4913
4914 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
4915 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
4916 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
4917 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
4918 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
4919 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
4920 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
4921 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
4922
4923 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
4924 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
4925 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
4926 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
4927 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
4928
4929 <blockquote><pre>
4930 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
4931 </pre></blockquote>
4932
4933 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
4934 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
4935 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
4936 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
4937 question.</p>
4938
4939 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
4940 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
4941
4942 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
4943 try running this command on the command line:</p>
4944
4945 <blockquote><pre>
4946 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
4947 </pre></blockquote>
4948
4949 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
4950 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
4951 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
4952
4953       </div>
4954       <div class="tags">
4955
4956
4957         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4958
4959
4960       </div>
4961     </div>
4962     <div class="padding"></div>
4963
4964     <div class="entry">
4965       <div class="title">
4966         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
4967       </div>
4968       <div class="date">
4969         30th November 2015
4970       </div>
4971       <div class="body">
4972         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
4973 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
4974 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
4975 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
4976 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
4977
4978 <blockquote>
4979
4980 <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>
4981
4982 <blockquote>
4983 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
4984
4985 The first step is to choose a
4986 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
4987 code.<br/>
4988
4989 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
4990 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
4991
4992 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
4993 work<br/>
4994
4995 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
4996 </blockquote>
4997
4998 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
4999 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
5000 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
5001 0x57</a></small></p>
5002
5003 <p>As the Debian Website
5004 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
5005 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
5006 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
5007 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
5008 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
5009 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
5010 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
5011 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
5012 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
5013 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
5014 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
5015 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
5016 Freedom">FaiF</a>
5017 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
5018 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
5019 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
5020 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
5021 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
5022 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
5023 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
5024 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
5025 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
5026 In March the SFC supported a
5027 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
5028 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
5029 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
5030 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
5031 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
5032 conferences
5033 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
5034 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
5035 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
5036 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
5037 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
5038 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
5039 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
5040 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
5041 Software.</p>
5042
5043 <p>If you support Free Software,
5044 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
5045 what the SFC do, agree with their
5046 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
5047 principles</a>, are happy about their
5048 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
5049 work on a project that is an SFC
5050 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
5051 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
5052 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
5053 Allan Webber</a>,
5054 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
5055 Smith</a>,
5056 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
5057 Bacon</a>, myself and
5058 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
5059 becoming a
5060 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
5061 next week your donation will be
5062 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
5063 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
5064 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
5065 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
5066 social media accounts.</p>
5067
5068 </blockquote>
5069
5070 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
5071 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
5072 supporter too?</p>
5073
5074       </div>
5075       <div class="tags">
5076
5077
5078         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5079
5080
5081       </div>
5082     </div>
5083     <div class="padding"></div>
5084
5085     <div class="entry">
5086       <div class="title">
5087         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
5088       </div>
5089       <div class="date">
5090         17th November 2015
5091       </div>
5092       <div class="body">
5093         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
5094 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
5095 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
5096 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
5097 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
5098 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
5099 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
5100 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
5101 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
5102 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
5103
5104 <pre>
5105 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
5106       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
5107 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
5108 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
5109 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
5110 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
5111 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
5112 </pre>
5113
5114 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
5115 my old key.</p>
5116
5117 <p>If you signed my old key
5118 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
5119 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
5120 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
5121 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
5122
5123       </div>
5124       <div class="tags">
5125
5126
5127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5128
5129
5130       </div>
5131     </div>
5132     <div class="padding"></div>
5133
5134     <div class="entry">
5135       <div class="title">
5136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
5137       </div>
5138       <div class="date">
5139         24th September 2015
5140       </div>
5141       <div class="body">
5142         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
5143 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
5144 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
5145 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
5146 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
5147 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
5148 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
5149
5150 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
5151
5152 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
5153 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
5154 by someone else.  I found
5155 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
5156 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
5157 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
5158 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
5159 from him.  Via
5160 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
5161 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
5162 discovered
5163 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
5164 available in Debian.</p>
5165
5166 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
5167 battery stats ever since. Now my
5168 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
5169 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
5170 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
5171 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
5172
5173 <pre>
5174 #!/bin/sh
5175 # Inspired by
5176 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
5177 # See also
5178 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
5179 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
5180
5181 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
5182     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
5183
5184 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
5185     (
5186         printf "timestamp,"
5187         for f in $files; do
5188             printf "%s," $f
5189         done
5190         echo
5191     ) > "$logfile"
5192 fi
5193
5194 log_battery() {
5195     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
5196     # when several log processes run in parallel.
5197     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
5198         for f in $files; do \
5199             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
5200         done)
5201     echo "$msg"
5202 }
5203
5204 cd /sys/class/power_supply
5205
5206 for bat in BAT*; do
5207     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
5208 done
5209 </pre>
5210
5211 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
5212 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
5213 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
5214 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
5215 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
5216 The code for the Debian package
5217 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
5218 available on github</a>.</p>
5219
5220 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
5221
5222 <pre>
5223 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
5224 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
5225 [...]
5226 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
5227 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
5228 </pre>
5229
5230 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
5231 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
5232 battery.</p>
5233
5234 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
5235 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
5236 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
5237 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
5238 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
5239 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
5240 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
5241 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
5242 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
5243 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
5244 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
5245 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
5246 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
5247 Linux too.</p>
5248
5249 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
5250 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
5251 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
5252 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
5253 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
5254 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
5255 load).</p>
5256
5257 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
5258 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
5259 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
5260 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
5261 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
5262 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
5263 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
5264 those.</p>
5265
5266 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
5267 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
5268 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
5269 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
5270 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
5271 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
5272 specific.</p>
5273
5274       </div>
5275       <div class="tags">
5276
5277
5278         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5279
5280
5281       </div>
5282     </div>
5283     <div class="padding"></div>
5284
5285     <div class="entry">
5286       <div class="title">
5287         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
5288       </div>
5289       <div class="date">
5290          5th July 2015
5291       </div>
5292       <div class="body">
5293         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
5294 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
5295 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
5296 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
5297 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
5298 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
5299 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
5300 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
5301 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
5302 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
5303 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
5304
5305 <p>One tip I got was to use the
5306 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
5307 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
5308 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
5309 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
5310 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
5311 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
5312
5313 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
5314 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
5315 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
5316 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
5317 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
5318 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
5319 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
5320 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
5321 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
5322 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
5323 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
5324 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
5325 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
5326 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
5327 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
5328
5329 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
5330 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
5331 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
5332 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
5333
5334 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
5335 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
5336
5337 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
5338 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
5339 different
5340 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
5341 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
5342
5343       </div>
5344       <div class="tags">
5345
5346
5347         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5348
5349
5350       </div>
5351     </div>
5352     <div class="padding"></div>
5353
5354     <div class="entry">
5355       <div class="title">
5356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
5357       </div>
5358       <div class="date">
5359          3rd July 2015
5360       </div>
5361       <div class="body">
5362         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
5363 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
5364 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
5365 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
5366 flickering.</p>
5367
5368 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
5369 still as
5370 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
5371 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
5372 good help from
5373 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
5374 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
5375 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
5376 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
5377 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
5378 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
5379 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
5380 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
5381 deteriorated since X41.</p>
5382
5383 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
5384 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
5385 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
5386 have suggestions.</p>
5387
5388 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
5389 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
5390 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
5391
5392       </div>
5393       <div class="tags">
5394
5395
5396         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5397
5398
5399       </div>
5400     </div>
5401     <div class="padding"></div>
5402
5403     <div class="entry">
5404       <div class="title">
5405         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
5406       </div>
5407       <div class="date">
5408         22nd November 2014
5409       </div>
5410       <div class="body">
5411         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
5412 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
5413 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
5414 courtesy of
5415 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
5416 Schubert</a> and
5417 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
5418 McVittie</a>.
5419
5420 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
5421 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
5422 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
5423 you upgrade:</p>
5424
5425 <p><blockquote><pre>
5426 Package: systemd-sysv
5427 Pin: release o=Debian
5428 Pin-Priority: -1
5429 </pre></blockquote><p>
5430
5431 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
5432 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
5433 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
5434 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
5435 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
5436
5437 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
5438 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
5439 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
5440 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
5441 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
5442 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
5443
5444 <p><blockquote><pre>
5445 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
5446 </pre></blockquote><p>
5447
5448 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
5449
5450 <p><blockquote><pre>
5451 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
5452 </pre></blockquote><p>
5453
5454 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
5455 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
5456
5457 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
5458 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
5459 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
5460 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
5461 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
5462 Jessie is released.</p>
5463
5464 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
5465 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
5466 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
5467 line.</p>
5468
5469       </div>
5470       <div class="tags">
5471
5472
5473         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5474
5475
5476       </div>
5477     </div>
5478     <div class="padding"></div>
5479
5480     <div class="entry">
5481       <div class="title">
5482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
5483       </div>
5484       <div class="date">
5485         10th November 2014
5486       </div>
5487       <div class="body">
5488         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
5489 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
5490 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
5491
5492 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
5493 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
5494 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
5495 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
5496 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
5497 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
5498 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
5499 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
5500 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
5501 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
5502 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
5503 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
5504 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
5505 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
5506 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
5507
5508 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
5509 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
5510 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
5511 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
5512 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
5513 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
5514 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
5515 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
5516 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
5517 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
5518 were fairly easy, and
5519 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
5520 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
5521 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
5522 useful approach.</p>
5523
5524 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
5525 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
5526 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
5527 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
5528 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
5529 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
5530 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
5531 this:</p>
5532
5533 <p><blockquote><pre>
5534 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
5535   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
5536 </pre></blockquote></p>
5537
5538 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
5539 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
5540
5541 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
5542 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
5543 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
5544 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
5545 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
5546 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
5547 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
5548 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
5549 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
5550 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
5551 system.</p>
5552
5553 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
5554 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
5555 SMTorP. :)</p>
5556
5557       </div>
5558       <div class="tags">
5559
5560
5561         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5562
5563
5564       </div>
5565     </div>
5566     <div class="padding"></div>
5567
5568     <div class="entry">
5569       <div class="title">
5570         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
5571       </div>
5572       <div class="date">
5573         22nd October 2014
5574       </div>
5575       <div class="body">
5576         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
5577 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
5578 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
5579 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
5580 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
5581 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
5582 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
5583 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
5584 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
5585 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
5586 lists I recently took over:</p>
5587
5588 <p><blockquote><pre>
5589 % time listadmin xiph
5590 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
5591 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
5592
5593 real    0m1.709s
5594 user    0m0.232s
5595 sys     0m0.012s
5596 %
5597 </pre></blockquote></p>
5598
5599 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
5600 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
5601 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
5602 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
5603 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
5604 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
5605 program.</p>
5606
5607 <p>If you install
5608 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
5609 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
5610 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
5611
5612 <p><blockquote><pre>
5613 username username@example.org
5614 spamlevel 23
5615 default discard
5616 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
5617
5618 password secret
5619 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
5620 mailman-list@lists.example.com
5621
5622 password hidden
5623 other-list@otherserver.example.org
5624 </pre></blockquote></p>
5625
5626 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
5627 learn the details.</p>
5628
5629 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
5630 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
5631 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
5632 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
5633
5634 <p><blockquote><pre>
5635 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
5636 </pre></blockquote></p>
5637
5638 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
5639 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
5640 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
5641 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
5642 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
5643 email.</p>
5644
5645 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
5646 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
5647 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
5648 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
5649 software.</p>
5650
5651 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5652 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5653 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5654
5655 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
5656 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
5657 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
5658 sure why.</p>
5659
5660       </div>
5661       <div class="tags">
5662
5663
5664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
5665
5666
5667       </div>
5668     </div>
5669     <div class="padding"></div>
5670
5671     <div class="entry">
5672       <div class="title">
5673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
5674       </div>
5675       <div class="date">
5676         17th October 2014
5677       </div>
5678       <div class="body">
5679         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
5680 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
5681 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
5682 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
5683 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
5684 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
5685 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
5686
5687 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
5688 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
5689 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
5690 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
5691 of this story.)</p>
5692
5693 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
5694 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
5695 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
5696 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
5697 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
5698 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
5699 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
5700 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
5701 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
5702 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
5703
5704 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
5705 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
5706 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
5707 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
5708
5709 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
5710 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
5711
5712 <p><blockquote><pre>
5713 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
5714 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
5715 </pre></blockquote></p>
5716
5717 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
5718 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
5719 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
5720 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
5721 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
5722 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
5723 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
5724 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
5725
5726 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
5727 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
5728
5729 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
5730 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
5731 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
5732 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
5733 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
5734
5735 <p><blockquote><pre>
5736 Task: isenkram-packages
5737 Section: hardware
5738 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
5739  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
5740  proposed.
5741 Test-new-install: show show
5742 Relevance: 8
5743 Packages: for-current-hardware
5744
5745 Task: isenkram-firmware
5746 Section: hardware
5747 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
5748  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
5749  packages are proposed.
5750 Test-new-install: mark show
5751 Relevance: 8
5752 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
5753 </pre></blockquote></p>
5754
5755 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
5756 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
5757 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
5758 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
5759 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
5760
5761 <p><blockquote><pre>
5762 #!/bin/sh
5763 #
5764 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
5765 export PATH
5766 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
5767 </pre></blockquote></p>
5768
5769 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
5770 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
5771
5772 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
5773 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
5774 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
5775 install.</p>
5776
5777 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
5778 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
5779 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
5780
5781       </div>
5782       <div class="tags">
5783
5784
5785         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
5786
5787
5788       </div>
5789     </div>
5790     <div class="padding"></div>
5791
5792     <div class="entry">
5793       <div class="title">
5794         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
5795       </div>
5796       <div class="date">
5797          4th October 2014
5798       </div>
5799       <div class="body">
5800         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
5801 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
5802 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
5803 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
5804
5805 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
5806
5807 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
5808 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
5809 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
5810
5811       </div>
5812       <div class="tags">
5813
5814
5815         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5816
5817
5818       </div>
5819     </div>
5820     <div class="padding"></div>
5821
5822     <div class="entry">
5823       <div class="title">
5824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
5825       </div>
5826       <div class="date">
5827          4th October 2014
5828       </div>
5829       <div class="body">
5830         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
5831 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
5832 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
5833 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
5834 Dibb.</p>
5835
5836 <p>I just wrapped up
5837 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
5838 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
5839 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
5840 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
5841 0.17.</p>
5842
5843 <ul>
5844
5845  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
5846  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
5847    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
5848  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
5849  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
5850  <li>Fix include orders</li>
5851  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
5852  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
5853  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
5854    the palette size is the same.</li>
5855  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
5856  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
5857  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
5858  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
5859    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
5860
5861 </ul>
5862
5863 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
5864 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
5865 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
5866
5867       </div>
5868       <div class="tags">
5869
5870
5871         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
5872
5873
5874       </div>
5875     </div>
5876     <div class="padding"></div>
5877
5878     <div class="entry">
5879       <div class="title">
5880         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
5881       </div>
5882       <div class="date">
5883         26th September 2014
5884       </div>
5885       <div class="body">
5886         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5887 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
5888 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
5889 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
5890 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
5891 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
5892 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
5893 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
5894 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
5895 future.  The
5896 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
5897 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
5898 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
5899 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
5900 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
5901
5902 <p>First, download the test ISO via
5903 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
5904 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
5905 or rsync (use
5906 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
5907 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
5908 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
5909 install with some tweaking.</p>
5910
5911 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
5912 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
5913
5914 <p><blockquote><pre>
5915 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
5916 </pre></blockquote></p>
5917
5918 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
5919 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
5920 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
5921 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
5922
5923 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
5924 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
5925 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
5926 your need.</p>
5927
5928 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
5929 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
5930 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
5931 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
5932 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
5933 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
5934 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
5935 days.</p>
5936
5937 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
5938 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
5939 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
5940 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
5941 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
5942 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
5943 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
5944 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
5945 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
5946
5947 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
5948 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
5949 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
5950
5951       </div>
5952       <div class="tags">
5953
5954
5955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5956
5957
5958       </div>
5959     </div>
5960     <div class="padding"></div>
5961
5962     <div class="entry">
5963       <div class="title">
5964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
5965       </div>
5966       <div class="date">
5967         25th September 2014
5968       </div>
5969       <div class="body">
5970         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
5971 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
5972 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
5973 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
5974 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
5975 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
5976 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
5977 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
5978 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
5979 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
5980 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
5981 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
5982 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
5983
5984 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
5985 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
5986 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
5987 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
5988 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
5989 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
5990 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
5991 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
5992 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
5993 list</a>. :)</p>
5994
5995       </div>
5996       <div class="tags">
5997
5998
5999         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
6000
6001
6002       </div>
6003     </div>
6004     <div class="padding"></div>
6005
6006     <div class="entry">
6007       <div class="title">
6008         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
6009       </div>
6010       <div class="date">
6011         16th September 2014
6012       </div>
6013       <div class="body">
6014         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
6015 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
6016 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
6017 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
6018 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
6019 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
6020 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
6021 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
6022 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
6023 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
6024 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
6025 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
6026 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
6027 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
6028
6029 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
6030 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
6031 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
6032 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
6033 depend on the small and clever package
6034 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
6035 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
6036 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
6037 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
6038 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
6039 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
6040 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
6041 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
6042 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
6043 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
6044 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
6045
6046 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
6047 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
6048 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
6049 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
6050 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
6051 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
6052 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
6053 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
6054 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
6055 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
6056 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
6057 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
6058 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
6059 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
6060 dialog.</p>
6061
6062 <p><table>
6063
6064 <tr>
6065 <th>Machine/setup</th>
6066 <th>Original tasksel</th>
6067 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
6068 <th>Reduction</th>
6069 </tr>
6070
6071 <tr>
6072 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
6073 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
6074 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
6075 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
6076 </tr>
6077
6078 <tr>
6079 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
6080 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
6081 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
6082 <td>23 min 40%</td>
6083 </tr>
6084
6085 <tr>
6086 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
6087 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
6088 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
6089 <td>11 min 50%</td>
6090 </tr>
6091
6092 <tr>
6093 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
6094 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
6095 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
6096 <td>2 min 33%</td>
6097 </tr>
6098
6099 <tr>
6100 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
6101 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
6102 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
6103 <td>4 min 21%</td>
6104 </tr>
6105
6106 </table></p>
6107
6108 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
6109 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
6110 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
6111 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
6112 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
6113 installed.</p>
6114
6115 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
6116 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
6117 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
6118 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
6119 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
6120 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
6121 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
6122 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
6123 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
6124 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
6125 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
6126 for the entire installation.</p>
6127
6128 <p>I've implemented this in the
6129 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
6130 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
6131 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
6132 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
6133 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
6134
6135 <p><blockquote><pre>
6136 #!/bin/sh
6137 set -e
6138 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
6139 info() {
6140     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
6141 }
6142 error() {
6143     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
6144 }
6145 override_install() {
6146     apt-install eatmydata || true
6147     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
6148         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
6149             file=/usr/bin/$bin
6150             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
6151             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
6152                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
6153                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
6154                     > /target$file.edu
6155                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
6156                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
6157                     --rename --quiet --add $file
6158                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
6159             else
6160                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
6161             fi
6162         done
6163     else
6164         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
6165     fi
6166 }
6167
6168 override_install
6169 </pre></blockquote></p>
6170
6171 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
6172 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
6173
6174 <p><blockquote><pre>
6175 #! /bin/sh -e
6176 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
6177 error() {
6178     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
6179 }
6180 remove_install_override() {
6181     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
6182         file=/usr/bin/$bin
6183         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
6184             rm /target$file
6185             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
6186                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
6187             rm /target$file.edu
6188         else
6189             error "Missing divert for $file."
6190         fi
6191     done
6192     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
6193 }
6194
6195 remove_install_override
6196 </pre></blockquote></p>
6197
6198 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
6199 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
6200 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
6201
6202 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
6203 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
6204 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
6205 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
6206 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
6207 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
6208 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
6209 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
6210 everyone.</p>
6211
6212 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
6213 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
6214 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
6215 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
6216
6217 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
6218 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
6219 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
6220 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
6221 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
6222
6223 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
6224 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
6225 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
6226 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
6227 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
6228
6229       </div>
6230       <div class="tags">
6231
6232
6233         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6234
6235
6236       </div>
6237     </div>
6238     <div class="padding"></div>
6239
6240     <div class="entry">
6241       <div class="title">
6242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
6243       </div>
6244       <div class="date">
6245         10th September 2014
6246       </div>
6247       <div class="body">
6248         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
6249 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
6250 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
6251 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
6252 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
6253 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
6254 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
6255 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
6256 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
6257 those problems are gone now.</p>
6258
6259 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
6260 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
6261 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
6262 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
6263 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
6264
6265 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
6266 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
6267 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
6268
6269 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
6270 line:</p>
6271
6272 <p><blockquote><pre>
6273 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
6274 </pre></blockquote></p>
6275
6276 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
6277 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
6278 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
6279 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
6280
6281 <p><blockquote><pre>
6282 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
6283 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
6284 %
6285 </pre></blockquote></p>
6286
6287 <p>Now if only
6288 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
6289 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
6290 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
6291 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
6292 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
6293 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
6294 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
6295 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
6296 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
6297
6298       </div>
6299       <div class="tags">
6300
6301
6302         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6303
6304
6305       </div>
6306     </div>
6307     <div class="padding"></div>
6308
6309     <div class="entry">
6310       <div class="title">
6311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
6312       </div>
6313       <div class="date">
6314         17th June 2014
6315       </div>
6316       <div class="body">
6317         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6318 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
6319 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
6320 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
6321 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
6322
6323 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
6324 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
6325 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
6326 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
6327 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
6328 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
6329 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
6330 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
6331 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
6332 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
6333 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
6334 goals.</p>
6335
6336 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
6337 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
6338 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
6339 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
6340 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
6341 chapters together into one large web page (aka
6342 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
6343 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
6344 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
6345 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
6346 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
6347 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
6348 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
6349 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
6350 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
6351 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
6352 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
6353 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
6354 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
6355 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
6356 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
6357 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
6358 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
6359 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
6360
6361 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
6362 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
6363 track the English original.  For this we use the
6364 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
6365 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
6366 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
6367 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
6368 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
6369 files), which the translations update with the native language
6370 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
6371 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
6372 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
6373 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
6374 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
6375 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
6376 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
6377 of the documentation.</p>
6378
6379 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
6380 recommend using
6381 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
6382 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
6383 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
6384 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
6385 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
6386 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
6387 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
6388 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
6389
6390 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
6391 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
6392 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
6393 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
6394 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
6395 translated images by storing translated versions in
6396 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
6397 package maintainers know more.</p>
6398
6399 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
6400 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
6401 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
6402 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
6403 PDF version</a> or the
6404 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
6405 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
6406 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
6407
6408 <p>To learn more, check out
6409 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
6410 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
6411 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
6412 manual on the wiki</a> and
6413 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
6414 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
6415
6416       </div>
6417       <div class="tags">
6418
6419
6420         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6421
6422
6423       </div>
6424     </div>
6425     <div class="padding"></div>
6426
6427     <div class="entry">
6428       <div class="title">
6429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
6430       </div>
6431       <div class="date">
6432         23rd April 2014
6433       </div>
6434       <div class="body">
6435         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
6436 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
6437 So I implemented one, using
6438 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
6439 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
6440 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
6441 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
6442 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
6443 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
6444
6445 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
6446 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
6447 packages to install.  The first part is in
6448 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
6449 this:</p>
6450
6451 <p><blockquote><pre>
6452 Task: isenkram
6453 Section: hardware
6454 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
6455  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
6456  proposed.
6457 Test-new-install: mark show
6458 Relevance: 8
6459 Packages: for-current-hardware
6460 </pre></blockquote></p>
6461
6462 <p>The second part is in
6463 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
6464 this:</p>
6465
6466 <p><blockquote><pre>
6467 #!/bin/sh
6468 #
6469 (
6470     isenkram-lookup
6471     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
6472 ) | sort -u
6473 </pre></blockquote></p>
6474
6475 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
6476 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
6477 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
6478 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
6479 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
6480 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
6481
6482 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
6483 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
6484 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
6485 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
6486 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
6487 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
6488 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
6489 the python-apt code (bug
6490 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
6491 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
6492 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
6493 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
6494 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
6495 unstable today.</p>
6496
6497 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
6498 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
6499 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
6500 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
6501 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
6502 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
6503 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
6504 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
6505 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
6506
6507 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
6508 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
6509 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
6510 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
6511 package.  See also
6512 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
6513 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
6514 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
6515 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
6516
6517       </div>
6518       <div class="tags">
6519
6520
6521         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6522
6523
6524       </div>
6525     </div>
6526     <div class="padding"></div>
6527
6528     <div class="entry">
6529       <div class="title">
6530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
6531       </div>
6532       <div class="date">
6533         15th April 2014
6534       </div>
6535       <div class="body">
6536         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
6537 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
6538 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
6539 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
6540 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
6541 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
6542
6543 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
6544 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
6545 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
6546 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
6547 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
6548 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
6549 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
6550
6551 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
6552 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
6553 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
6554 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
6555 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
6556 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
6557 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
6558 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
6559 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
6560 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
6561 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
6562 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
6563
6564 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
6565 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
6566 become root:</p>
6567
6568 <p><pre>
6569 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
6570   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
6571   u-boot-tools
6572 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
6573   freedom-maker
6574 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
6575 </pre></p>
6576
6577 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
6578 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
6579 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
6580 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
6581 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
6582 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
6583 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
6584 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
6585
6586 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
6587 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
6588 the preseed values:</p>
6589
6590 <p><pre>
6591 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
6592 </pre></p>
6593
6594 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
6595 it still work.</p>
6596
6597 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
6598 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
6599 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
6600 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
6601 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
6602 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
6603 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
6604
6605 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
6606 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
6607 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
6608 irc.debian.org)</a> and
6609 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6610 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6611
6612       </div>
6613       <div class="tags">
6614
6615
6616         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6617
6618
6619       </div>
6620     </div>
6621     <div class="padding"></div>
6622
6623     <div class="entry">
6624       <div class="title">
6625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
6626       </div>
6627       <div class="date">
6628          9th April 2014
6629       </div>
6630       <div class="body">
6631         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
6632 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
6633 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
6634 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
6635 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
6636 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
6637 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
6638 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
6639 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
6640 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
6641 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
6642 have looked at a system called
6643 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
6644 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
6645
6646 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
6647 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
6648 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
6649 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
6650 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
6651 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
6652 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
6653 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
6654 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
6655 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
6656 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
6657 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
6658 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
6659
6660 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
6661 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
6662 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
6663 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
6664 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
6665 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
6666 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
6667 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
6668 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
6669 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
6670 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
6671 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
6672 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
6673 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
6674 account.</p>
6675
6676 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
6677 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
6678 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
6679 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
6680 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
6681 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
6682 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
6683
6684 <p><blockquote><pre>
6685 [s3c]
6686 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
6687 backend-login: API-login
6688 backend-password: API-password
6689 fs-passphrase: local-password
6690 </pre></blockquote></p>
6691
6692 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
6693 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
6694 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
6695 details and password to create it:</p>
6696
6697 <p><blockquote><pre>
6698 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
6699 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
6700   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
6701 Enter backend login:
6702 Enter backend password:
6703 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
6704 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
6705 Enter encryption password:
6706 Confirm encryption password:
6707 Generating random encryption key...
6708 Creating metadata tables...
6709 Dumping metadata...
6710 ..objects..
6711 ..blocks..
6712 ..inodes..
6713 ..inode_blocks..
6714 ..symlink_targets..
6715 ..names..
6716 ..contents..
6717 ..ext_attributes..
6718 Compressing and uploading metadata...
6719 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
6720 # </pre></blockquote></p>
6721
6722 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
6723
6724 <p><blockquote><pre>
6725 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
6726   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
6727 Using 4 upload threads.
6728 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
6729 Reading metadata...
6730 ..objects..
6731 ..blocks..
6732 ..inodes..
6733 ..inode_blocks..
6734 ..symlink_targets..
6735 ..names..
6736 ..contents..
6737 ..ext_attributes..
6738 Mounting filesystem...
6739 # df -h /s3ql
6740 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
6741 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
6742 #
6743 </pre></blockquote></p>
6744
6745 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
6746 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
6747 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
6748 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
6749 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
6750 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
6751
6752 <p><blockquote><pre>
6753 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
6754 #
6755 </pre></blockquote></p>
6756
6757 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
6758 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
6759 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
6760 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
6761 file system:</p>
6762
6763 <p><blockquote><pre>
6764 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
6765 Using cached metadata.
6766 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
6767 Checking DB integrity...
6768 Creating temporary extra indices...
6769 Checking lost+found...
6770 Checking cached objects...
6771 Checking names (refcounts)...
6772 Checking contents (names)...
6773 Checking contents (inodes)...
6774 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
6775 Checking objects (reference counts)...
6776 Checking objects (backend)...
6777 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
6778 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
6779 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
6780 Checking objects (sizes)...
6781 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
6782 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
6783 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
6784 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
6785 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
6786 Checking inodes (sizes)...
6787 Checking extended attributes (names)...
6788 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
6789 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
6790 Checking directory reachability...
6791 Checking unix conventions...
6792 Checking referential integrity...
6793 Dropping temporary indices...
6794 Backing up old metadata...
6795 Dumping metadata...
6796 ..objects..
6797 ..blocks..
6798 ..inodes..
6799 ..inode_blocks..
6800 ..symlink_targets..
6801 ..names..
6802 ..contents..
6803 ..ext_attributes..
6804 Compressing and uploading metadata...
6805 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
6806 #
6807 </pre></blockquote></p>
6808
6809 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
6810 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
6811 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
6812 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
6813 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
6814 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
6815 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
6816 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
6817 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
6818 working set.</p>
6819
6820 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
6821 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
6822 busy:</p>
6823
6824 <p><blockquote><pre>
6825 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
6826   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
6827 Using 8 upload threads.
6828 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
6829 #
6830 </pre></blockquote></p>
6831
6832 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
6833 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
6834 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
6835 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
6836 s3qlctrl:
6837
6838 <p><blockquote><pre>
6839 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
6840 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
6841 #
6842 </pre></blockquote></p>
6843
6844 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
6845 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
6846 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
6847 a report:</p>
6848
6849 <p><blockquote><pre>
6850 # s3qlstat /s3ql
6851 Directory entries:    9141
6852 Inodes:               9143
6853 Data blocks:          8851
6854 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
6855 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
6856 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
6857 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
6858 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
6859 #
6860 </pre></blockquote></p>
6861
6862 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
6863 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
6864 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
6865 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
6866 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
6867 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
6868 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
6869 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
6870 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
6871 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
6872 best.</p>
6873
6874 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
6875 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
6876 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
6877 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
6878 poster is titled
6879 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
6880 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
6881 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
6882 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
6883 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
6884
6885 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
6886 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
6887 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
6888 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
6889 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
6890 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
6891 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
6892 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
6893
6894 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
6895 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
6896 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
6897 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
6898 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
6899 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
6900 only read from it.</p>
6901
6902 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6903 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6904 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6905
6906       </div>
6907       <div class="tags">
6908
6909
6910         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6911
6912
6913       </div>
6914     </div>
6915     <div class="padding"></div>
6916
6917     <div class="entry">
6918       <div class="title">
6919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
6920       </div>
6921       <div class="date">
6922         14th March 2014
6923       </div>
6924       <div class="body">
6925         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
6926 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
6927 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
6928 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
6929 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
6930 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
6931 release (0.2).</p>
6932
6933 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
6934 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
6935 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
6936 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
6937 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
6938 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
6939 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
6940 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
6941 and build using
6942 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
6943 with a user with sudo access to become root:
6944
6945 <pre>
6946 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
6947   freedom-maker
6948 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
6949   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
6950   u-boot-tools
6951 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
6952 </pre>
6953
6954 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
6955 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
6956 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
6957 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
6958 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
6959 kpartx call.</p>
6960
6961 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
6962 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
6963 the preseed values:</p>
6964
6965 <pre>
6966 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
6967 </pre>
6968
6969 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
6970 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
6971 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
6972 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
6973 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
6974 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
6975
6976 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
6977 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
6978 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
6979 irc.debian.org)</a> and
6980 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6981 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6982
6983       </div>
6984       <div class="tags">
6985
6986
6987         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6988
6989
6990       </div>
6991     </div>
6992     <div class="padding"></div>
6993
6994     <div class="entry">
6995       <div class="title">
6996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
6997       </div>
6998       <div class="date">
6999         22nd February 2014
7000       </div>
7001       <div class="body">
7002         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
7003 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
7004 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
7005 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
7006 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
7007 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
7008 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
7009 proper home since then.</p>
7010
7011 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
7012 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
7013 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
7014 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
7015 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
7016
7017 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
7018 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
7019 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
7020 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
7021 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
7022 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
7023 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
7024 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
7025 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
7026
7027       </div>
7028       <div class="tags">
7029
7030
7031         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7032
7033
7034       </div>
7035     </div>
7036     <div class="padding"></div>
7037
7038     <div class="entry">
7039       <div class="title">
7040         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
7041       </div>
7042       <div class="date">
7043          3rd February 2014
7044       </div>
7045       <div class="body">
7046         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
7047 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
7048 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
7049 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
7050 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
7051 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
7052 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
7053 <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>,
7054 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
7055
7056 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
7057 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
7058 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
7059 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
7060 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
7061 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
7062
7063 <p><blockquote><pre>
7064 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
7065 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
7066 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
7067 dhclient /dev/eth0
7068 </pre></blockquote></p>
7069
7070 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
7071 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
7072 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
7073
7074 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
7075 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
7076 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
7077 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
7078 side.</p>
7079
7080 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
7081 stuff:</p>
7082
7083 <p><blockquote><pre>
7084 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
7085 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
7086 EOF
7087 apt-get update
7088 apt-get dist-upgrade
7089 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
7090     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
7091 update-alternatives --config runsystem
7092 </pre></blockquote></p>
7093
7094 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
7095 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
7096 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
7097 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
7098 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
7099 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
7100 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
7101 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
7102 ssh instead.
7103
7104 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
7105 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
7106 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
7107 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
7108 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
7109 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
7110
7111 <p><blockquote><pre>
7112 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
7113 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
7114 EOF
7115 </pre></blockquote></p>
7116
7117 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
7118 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
7119 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
7120 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
7121
7122 <p><blockquote><pre>
7123 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
7124 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
7125 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
7126 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
7127 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
7128 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
7129 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
7130 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
7131 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
7132 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
7133 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
7134 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
7135 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
7136 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
7137 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
7138 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
7139 #
7140 </pre></blockquote></p>
7141
7142 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
7143 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
7144 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
7145 command line stuff.<p>
7146
7147       </div>
7148       <div class="tags">
7149
7150
7151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7152
7153
7154       </div>
7155     </div>
7156     <div class="padding"></div>
7157
7158     <div class="entry">
7159       <div class="title">
7160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
7161       </div>
7162       <div class="date">
7163         14th January 2014
7164       </div>
7165       <div class="body">
7166         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
7167 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
7168 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
7169 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
7170 the source.  The company behind it provide
7171 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
7172 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
7173 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
7174 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
7175 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
7176 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
7177 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
7178 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
7179 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
7180 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
7181 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
7182 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
7183 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
7184 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
7185 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
7186 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
7187 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
7188 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
7189 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
7190
7191 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
7192
7193 <ul>
7194
7195   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
7196   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
7197   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
7198
7199 </ul>
7200
7201 <p>You can
7202 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
7203 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
7204 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
7205 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
7206 include a test suite check.</p>
7207
7208       </div>
7209       <div class="tags">
7210
7211
7212         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7213
7214
7215       </div>
7216     </div>
7217     <div class="padding"></div>
7218
7219     <div class="entry">
7220       <div class="title">
7221         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
7222       </div>
7223       <div class="date">
7224         24th November 2013
7225       </div>
7226       <div class="body">
7227         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
7228 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
7229 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
7230 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
7231 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
7232 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
7233 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
7234 is working on.  I checked the
7235 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
7236 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
7237 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
7238 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
7239 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
7240 These are the release notes:</p>
7241
7242 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
7243
7244 <ul>
7245
7246   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
7247    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
7248    up.</li>
7249
7250   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
7251
7252   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
7253    Matthias Klose.</li>
7254
7255   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
7256    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
7257
7258   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
7259    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
7260    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
7261
7262 </ul>
7263
7264 <p>You can
7265 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
7266 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
7267 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
7268 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
7269 include a testsuite check.</p>
7270
7271       </div>
7272       <div class="tags">
7273
7274
7275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7276
7277
7278       </div>
7279     </div>
7280     <div class="padding"></div>
7281
7282     <div class="entry">
7283       <div class="title">
7284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
7285       </div>
7286       <div class="date">
7287          2nd November 2013
7288       </div>
7289       <div class="body">
7290         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
7291 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
7292 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
7293 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
7294 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
7295
7296 <p><pre>
7297 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
7298 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
7299 # Provides:          rsyslog
7300 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
7301 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
7302 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
7303 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
7304 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
7305 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
7306 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
7307 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
7308 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
7309 ### END INIT INFO
7310 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
7311 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
7312 </pre></p>
7313
7314 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
7315 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
7316 info/comments.</p>
7317
7318 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
7319 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
7320
7321 <p><pre>
7322 #!/bin/sh
7323
7324 # Define LSB log_* functions.
7325 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
7326 # and status_of_proc is working.
7327 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
7328
7329 #
7330 # Function that starts the daemon/service
7331
7332 #
7333 do_start()
7334 {
7335         # Return
7336         #   0 if daemon has been started
7337         #   1 if daemon was already running
7338         #   2 if daemon could not be started
7339         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
7340                 || return 1
7341         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
7342                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
7343                 || return 2
7344         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
7345         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
7346         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
7347 }
7348
7349 #
7350 # Function that stops the daemon/service
7351 #
7352 do_stop()
7353 {
7354         # Return
7355         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
7356         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
7357         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
7358         #   other if a failure occurred
7359         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
7360         RETVAL="$?"
7361         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
7362         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
7363         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
7364         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
7365         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
7366         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
7367         # sleep for some time.
7368         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
7369         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
7370         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
7371         rm -f $PIDFILE
7372         return "$RETVAL"
7373 }
7374
7375 #
7376 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
7377 #
7378 do_reload() {
7379         #
7380         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
7381         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
7382         # then implement that here.
7383         #
7384         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
7385         return 0
7386 }
7387
7388 SCRIPTNAME=$1
7389 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
7390 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
7391 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
7392     script="$1"
7393     shift
7394     . $script
7395 else
7396     exit 0
7397 fi
7398
7399 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
7400 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
7401
7402 # Exit if the package is not installed
7403 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
7404
7405 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
7406 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
7407
7408 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
7409 . /lib/init/vars.sh
7410
7411 case "$1" in
7412   start)
7413         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
7414         do_start
7415         case "$?" in
7416                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
7417                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
7418         esac
7419         ;;
7420   stop)
7421         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
7422         do_stop
7423         case "$?" in
7424                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
7425                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
7426         esac
7427         ;;
7428   status)
7429         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
7430         ;;
7431   #reload|force-reload)
7432         #
7433         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
7434         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
7435         #
7436         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
7437         #do_reload
7438         #log_end_msg $?
7439         #;;
7440   restart|force-reload)
7441         #
7442         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
7443         # 'force-reload' alias
7444         #
7445         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
7446         do_stop
7447         case "$?" in
7448           0|1)
7449                 do_start
7450                 case "$?" in
7451                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
7452                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
7453                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
7454                 esac
7455                 ;;
7456           *)
7457                 # Failed to stop
7458                 log_end_msg 1
7459                 ;;
7460         esac
7461         ;;
7462   *)
7463         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
7464         exit 3
7465         ;;
7466 esac
7467
7468 :
7469 </pre></p>
7470
7471 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
7472 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
7473 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
7474 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
7475
7476 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
7477 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
7478 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
7479 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
7480 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
7481
7482       </div>
7483       <div class="tags">
7484
7485
7486         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7487
7488
7489       </div>
7490     </div>
7491     <div class="padding"></div>
7492
7493     <div class="entry">
7494       <div class="title">
7495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
7496       </div>
7497       <div class="date">
7498          1st November 2013
7499       </div>
7500       <div class="body">
7501         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
7502 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
7503 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
7504 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
7505 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
7506 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
7507 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
7508 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
7509 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
7510 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
7511 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
7512 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
7513
7514 <p>The source is now available from
7515 <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>
7516
7517       </div>
7518       <div class="tags">
7519
7520
7521         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7522
7523
7524       </div>
7525     </div>
7526     <div class="padding"></div>
7527
7528     <div class="entry">
7529       <div class="title">
7530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
7531       </div>
7532       <div class="date">
7533         27th October 2013
7534       </div>
7535       <div class="body">
7536         <p>The
7537 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
7538 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
7539 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
7540 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
7541 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
7542 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
7543 of a plan to simplify the build system for
7544 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
7545 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
7546 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
7547 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
7548 Raspberry Pi.</p>
7549
7550 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
7551 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
7552 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
7553 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
7554 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
7555 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
7556 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
7557 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
7558 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
7559 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
7560 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
7561 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
7562 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
7563 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
7564 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
7565 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
7566 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
7567 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
7568 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
7569 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
7570 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
7571 available from
7572 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
7573 upstream project page</a>.</p>
7574
7575 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
7576 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
7577 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
7578 list:</p>
7579
7580 <p><pre>
7581 #!/bin/sh
7582 set -e # Exit on first error
7583 rootdir="$1"
7584 cd "$rootdir"
7585 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
7586 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
7587 EOF
7588 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
7589 # install a kernel somewhere too.
7590 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
7591     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
7592 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
7593 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
7594 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
7595 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
7596 </pre></p>
7597
7598 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
7599 to build the image:</p>
7600
7601 <pre>
7602 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
7603     --variant minbase \
7604     --arch armel \
7605     --distribution jessie \
7606     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
7607     --image test.img \
7608     --size 600M \
7609     --bootsize 64M \
7610     --boottype vfat \
7611     --log-level debug \
7612     --verbose \
7613     --no-kernel \
7614     --no-extlinux \
7615     --root-password raspberry \
7616     --hostname raspberrypi \
7617     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
7618     --customize `pwd`/customize \
7619     --package netbase \
7620     --package git-core \
7621     --package binutils \
7622     --package ca-certificates \
7623     --package wget \
7624     --package kmod
7625 </pre></p>
7626
7627 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
7628 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
7629 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
7630 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
7631 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
7632 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
7633 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
7634
7635 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
7636 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
7637 build dependency list.</p>
7638
7639 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
7640 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
7641 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
7642 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
7643
7644       </div>
7645       <div class="tags">
7646
7647
7648         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
7649
7650
7651       </div>
7652     </div>
7653     <div class="padding"></div>
7654
7655     <div class="entry">
7656       <div class="title">
7657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
7658       </div>
7659       <div class="date">
7660         15th October 2013
7661       </div>
7662       <div class="body">
7663         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
7664 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
7665 these. :)</p>
7666
7667 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
7668 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
7669 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
7670 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
7671 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
7672 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
7673 hope you will to. :)</p>
7674
7675 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
7676 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
7677 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
7678 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
7679 donated.  Are you next?</p>
7680
7681 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
7682 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
7683 statement under the heading
7684 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
7685 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
7686 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
7687 too.</p>
7688
7689       </div>
7690       <div class="tags">
7691
7692
7693         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7694
7695
7696       </div>
7697     </div>
7698     <div class="padding"></div>
7699
7700     <div class="entry">
7701       <div class="title">
7702         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
7703       </div>
7704       <div class="date">
7705         27th September 2013
7706       </div>
7707       <div class="body">
7708         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
7709 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
7710 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
7711 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
7712
7713 <ul>
7714
7715 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
7716 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
7717
7718 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
7719 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
7720
7721 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
7722 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
7723 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
7724 (Youtube)</li>
7725
7726 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
7727 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
7728
7729 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
7730 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
7731
7732 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
7733 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
7734 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
7735
7736 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
7737 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
7738 (Youtube)</li>
7739
7740 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
7741 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
7742
7743 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
7744 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
7745
7746 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
7747 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
7748 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
7749
7750 </ul>
7751
7752 <p>A larger list is available from
7753 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
7754 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
7755
7756 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
7757 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
7758 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
7759 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
7760 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
7761 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
7762 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
7763 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
7764 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
7765 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
7766 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
7767
7768       </div>
7769       <div class="tags">
7770
7771
7772         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7773
7774
7775       </div>
7776     </div>
7777     <div class="padding"></div>
7778
7779     <div class="entry">
7780       <div class="title">
7781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
7782       </div>
7783       <div class="date">
7784         10th September 2013
7785       </div>
7786       <div class="body">
7787         <p>I was introduced to the
7788 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
7789 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
7790 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
7791 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
7792 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
7793 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
7794 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
7795 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
7796
7797 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
7798 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
7799 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
7800 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
7801 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
7802
7803 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
7804 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
7805 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
7806 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
7807 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
7808 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
7809 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
7810 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
7811 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
7812 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
7813 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
7814 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
7815 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
7816 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
7817 missing in Debian).</p>
7818
7819 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
7820 scripts
7821 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
7822 and a administrative web interface
7823 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
7824 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
7825 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
7826 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
7827 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
7828 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
7829 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
7830 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
7831 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
7832 this is really working yet, see
7833 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
7834 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
7835 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
7836 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
7837 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
7838 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
7839 with lots of half baked features.</p>
7840
7841 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
7842 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
7843 at.</p>
7844
7845 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
7846
7847 <ol>
7848
7849 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
7850 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
7851 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
7852 to the Debian installer:<p>
7853 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
7854
7855 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
7856 install on.</li>
7857
7858 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
7859 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
7860
7861 </ol>
7862
7863 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
7864
7865 <ol>
7866
7867 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
7868 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
7869 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
7870 <pre>
7871 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
7872 </pre></li>
7873 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
7874 <pre>
7875 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
7876    apt-key add -
7877 apt-get update
7878 apt-get install freedombox-setup
7879 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
7880 </pre></li>
7881 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
7882
7883 </ol>
7884
7885 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
7886 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
7887 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
7888 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
7889 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
7890
7891 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
7892 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
7893 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
7894 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
7895
7896 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
7897 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
7898 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
7899 irc.debian.org and the
7900 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
7901 mailing list</a>.</p>
7902
7903 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
7904 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
7905 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
7906 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
7907 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
7908 default password is 'secret'.</p>
7909
7910       </div>
7911       <div class="tags">
7912
7913
7914         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7915
7916
7917       </div>
7918     </div>
7919     <div class="padding"></div>
7920
7921     <div class="entry">
7922       <div class="title">
7923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
7924       </div>
7925       <div class="date">
7926         18th August 2013
7927       </div>
7928       <div class="body">
7929         <p>Earlier, I reported about
7930 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
7931 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
7932 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
7933 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
7934 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
7935 currently on the disk.</p>
7936
7937 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
7938 <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>
7939 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
7940 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
7941 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
7942 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
7943 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
7944 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
7945 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
7946 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
7947 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
7948 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
7949 the broken disks.</p>
7950
7951       </div>
7952       <div class="tags">
7953
7954
7955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7956
7957
7958       </div>
7959     </div>
7960     <div class="padding"></div>
7961
7962     <div class="entry">
7963       <div class="title">
7964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
7965       </div>
7966       <div class="date">
7967         17th July 2013
7968       </div>
7969       <div class="body">
7970         <p>Today I switched to
7971 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7972 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7973 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7974 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
7975 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7976 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7977 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7978 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7979 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7980 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7981 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7982 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7983 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7984 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7985 station from now on.</p>
7986
7987 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7988 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7989 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7990 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7991 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7992 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7993 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7994 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7995 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7996 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7997 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7998 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7999
8000 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
8001 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
8002 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
8003 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
8004 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
8005 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
8006 parameters are tuned:</p>
8007
8008 <ul>
8009
8010 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
8011     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
8012
8013 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
8014     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
8015     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
8016
8017 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
8018     systems.</li>
8019
8020 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
8021     /etc/fstab.</li>
8022
8023 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
8024
8025 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
8026     cron.daily).</li>
8027
8028 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
8029     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
8030
8031 </ul>
8032
8033 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
8034 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
8035 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
8036 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
8037 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
8038 from getting the data on the disk (see
8039 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
8040 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
8041 right thing to do.</p>
8042
8043 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
8044 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
8045 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
8046
8047 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
8048 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
8049 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
8050 instead of during my work.</p>
8051
8052 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
8053 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
8054
8055 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
8056 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
8057 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
8058
8059 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
8060 there.</p>
8061
8062 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
8063 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
8064 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
8065 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
8066 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
8067 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
8068 back.</p>
8069
8070       </div>
8071       <div class="tags">
8072
8073
8074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8075
8076
8077       </div>
8078     </div>
8079     <div class="padding"></div>
8080
8081     <div class="entry">
8082       <div class="title">
8083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
8084       </div>
8085       <div class="date">
8086         10th July 2013
8087       </div>
8088       <div class="body">
8089         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
8090 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
8091 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
8092 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
8093 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
8094 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
8095 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
8096 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
8097
8098 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
8099 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
8100 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
8101 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
8102 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
8103 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
8104 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
8105 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
8106 lock up when I download a new
8107 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
8108 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
8109 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
8110
8111 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
8112 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
8113 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
8114 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
8115 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
8116 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
8117
8118 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
8119 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
8120 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
8121 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
8122 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
8123 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
8124
8125 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
8126 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
8127 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
8128 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
8129 exist).</p>
8130
8131       </div>
8132       <div class="tags">
8133
8134
8135         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8136
8137
8138       </div>
8139     </div>
8140     <div class="padding"></div>
8141
8142     <div class="entry">
8143       <div class="title">
8144         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
8145       </div>
8146       <div class="date">
8147          9th July 2013
8148       </div>
8149       <div class="body">
8150         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
8151 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
8152 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
8153 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
8154 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8155 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
8156 Bitraf</a>.</p>
8157
8158 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
8159 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
8160 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
8161 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
8162 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
8163
8164       </div>
8165       <div class="tags">
8166
8167
8168         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8169
8170
8171       </div>
8172     </div>
8173     <div class="padding"></div>
8174
8175     <div class="entry">
8176       <div class="title">
8177         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
8178       </div>
8179       <div class="date">
8180          5th July 2013
8181       </div>
8182       <div class="body">
8183         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
8184 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
8185 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
8186 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
8187 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
8188 ended up picking a
8189 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
8190 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
8191 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
8192 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
8193 on that below.</p>
8194
8195 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
8196 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
8197 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
8198 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
8199 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
8200 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
8201 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
8202 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
8203 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
8204
8205 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
8206 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
8207 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
8208 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
8209 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
8210 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
8211 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
8212
8213 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
8214 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
8215
8216 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
8217 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
8218 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
8219 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
8220 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
8221 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
8222 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
8223 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
8224 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
8225 kernel developers as
8226 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
8227 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
8228 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
8229 Lenovo forums, both for
8230 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
8231 2012-11-10</a> and for
8232 <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
8233 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
8234 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
8235 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
8236 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
8237 There is even a
8238 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
8239 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
8240 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
8241
8242 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
8243 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
8244 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
8245 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
8246 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
8247 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
8248 fixed. :)</p>
8249
8250       </div>
8251       <div class="tags">
8252
8253
8254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8255
8256
8257       </div>
8258     </div>
8259     <div class="padding"></div>
8260
8261     <div class="entry">
8262       <div class="title">
8263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
8264       </div>
8265       <div class="date">
8266          4th July 2013
8267       </div>
8268       <div class="body">
8269         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
8270 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
8271 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
8272 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
8273 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
8274 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
8275 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
8276 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
8277 with an expencive door stop.</p>
8278
8279 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
8280 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
8281 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
8282 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
8283 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
8284 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
8285 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
8286
8287 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
8288 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
8289 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
8290 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
8291 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
8292 new laptop now. :)</p>
8293
8294 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
8295
8296       </div>
8297       <div class="tags">
8298
8299
8300         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8301
8302
8303       </div>
8304     </div>
8305     <div class="padding"></div>
8306
8307     <div class="entry">
8308       <div class="title">
8309         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
8310       </div>
8311       <div class="date">
8312         25th June 2013
8313       </div>
8314       <div class="body">
8315         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
8316 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
8317 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
8318 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
8319 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
8320 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
8321 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
8322 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
8323 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
8324 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
8325 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
8326
8327 <p><pre>
8328 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
8329 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
8330 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
8331 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
8332 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
8333 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
8334 firmware-ipw2x00
8335 firmware-ipw2x00
8336 Preconfiguring packages ...
8337 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
8338 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
8339 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
8340 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
8341 #
8342 </pre></p>
8343
8344 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
8345 printed instead:</p>
8346
8347 <p><pre>
8348 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
8349 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
8350 #
8351 </pre></p>
8352
8353 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
8354 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
8355
8356 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
8357 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
8358 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
8359 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
8360 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
8361 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
8362 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
8363 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
8364 machine.</p>
8365
8366 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
8367 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
8368 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
8369 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
8370 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
8371 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
8372
8373       </div>
8374       <div class="tags">
8375
8376
8377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8378
8379
8380       </div>
8381     </div>
8382     <div class="padding"></div>
8383
8384     <div class="entry">
8385       <div class="title">
8386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
8387       </div>
8388       <div class="date">
8389         11th June 2013
8390       </div>
8391       <div class="body">
8392         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
8393 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
8394 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
8395 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
8396 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
8397 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
8398 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
8399 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
8400 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
8401 i915 driver used by the
8402 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8403 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
8404
8405 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
8406 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
8407 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
8408 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
8409 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
8410
8411 <pre>
8412 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
8413 update-initramfs -u -k all
8414 </pre>
8415
8416 <p>Since March 2012 there is
8417 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
8418 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
8419 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
8420 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
8421 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
8422 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
8423 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
8424 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
8425 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
8426 number.</p>
8427
8428 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
8429 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
8430
8431 <p><pre>
8432 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
8433     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
8434     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
8435  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
8436  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
8437     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
8438  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
8439     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
8440  Latency: 0
8441  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
8442  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
8443  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
8444  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
8445  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
8446  Capabilities: <access denied>
8447  Kernel driver in use: i915
8448 </pre></p>
8449
8450 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
8451
8452 <p><pre>
8453 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
8454        ...
8455         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
8456         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
8457        ...
8458 }
8459 </pre></p>
8460
8461 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
8462 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
8463 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
8464 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
8465 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
8466 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
8467 yet shown up in
8468 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
8469 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
8470 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
8471 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
8472 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
8473 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
8474
8475 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
8476 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
8477 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
8478 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
8479 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
8480 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
8481 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
8482 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
8483 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
8484 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
8485 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
8486 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
8487
8488 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
8489 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
8490 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
8491 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
8492 backlight.</p>
8493
8494       </div>
8495       <div class="tags">
8496
8497
8498         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8499
8500
8501       </div>
8502     </div>
8503     <div class="padding"></div>
8504
8505     <div class="entry">
8506       <div class="title">
8507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
8508       </div>
8509       <div class="date">
8510         27th May 2013
8511       </div>
8512       <div class="body">
8513         <p>Two days ago, I asked
8514 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
8515 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
8516 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
8517 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
8518 and Windows 8.</p>
8519
8520 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
8521 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
8522 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
8523 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
8524 enough to tell.</p>
8525
8526 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
8527 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
8528 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
8529 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
8530 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
8531 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
8532 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
8533 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
8534 to follow.</p>
8535
8536 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
8537 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
8538 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
8539 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
8540 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
8541 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
8542 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
8543 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
8544
8545 <p>I've updated the
8546 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
8547 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
8548 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
8549 machine.</p>
8550
8551 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
8552 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
8553
8554       </div>
8555       <div class="tags">
8556
8557
8558         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8559
8560
8561       </div>
8562     </div>
8563     <div class="padding"></div>
8564
8565     <div class="entry">
8566       <div class="title">
8567         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
8568       </div>
8569       <div class="date">
8570         25th May 2013
8571       </div>
8572       <div class="body">
8573         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
8574 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
8575 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
8576 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
8577 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
8578 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
8579
8580 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
8581 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
8582 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
8583 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
8584 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
8585 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
8586 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
8587 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
8588 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
8589 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
8590
8591 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
8592 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8593 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
8594 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
8595 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
8596 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
8597
8598 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
8599 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
8600 on new Laptops?</p>
8601
8602       </div>
8603       <div class="tags">
8604
8605
8606         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8607
8608
8609       </div>
8610     </div>
8611     <div class="padding"></div>
8612
8613     <div class="entry">
8614       <div class="title">
8615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
8616       </div>
8617       <div class="date">
8618         17th May 2013
8619       </div>
8620       <div class="body">
8621         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
8622 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
8623 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
8624 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
8625 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
8626 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
8627 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
8628 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
8629 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
8630 donate some money</a>.
8631
8632 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
8633 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
8634 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
8635 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
8636 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
8637
8638 <p>The script,
8639 <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/>
8640 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
8641 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
8642 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
8643
8644 <ol>
8645
8646 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
8647 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
8648 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
8649     our configuration.</li>
8650 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
8651     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
8652     according to the profile specified in the config above,
8653     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
8654 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
8655     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
8656 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
8657
8658 </ol>
8659
8660 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
8661 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
8662 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
8663 the needed packages.</p>
8664
8665 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
8666 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
8667 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
8668 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
8669 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
8670 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
8671
8672 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
8673 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
8674 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
8675
8676 <p><pre>
8677 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
8678 DESKTOP="lxde"
8679 </pre></p>
8680
8681 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
8682 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
8683 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
8684 boot.</p>
8685
8686       </div>
8687       <div class="tags">
8688
8689
8690         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8691
8692
8693       </div>
8694     </div>
8695     <div class="padding"></div>
8696
8697     <div class="entry">
8698       <div class="title">
8699         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
8700       </div>
8701       <div class="date">
8702         11th May 2013
8703       </div>
8704       <div class="body">
8705         <P>In January,
8706 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
8707 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
8708 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
8709 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
8710 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
8711 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
8712 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
8713 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
8714 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
8715 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
8716 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
8717 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
8718
8719 <p><table>
8720 <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>
8721 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
8722 <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>
8723 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
8724 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
8725 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
8726 <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>
8727 <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>
8728 <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>
8729 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
8730 </table></p>
8731
8732 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
8733 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
8734 available in experimental.</p>
8735
8736 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
8737 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
8738 for LEGO designers.</p>
8739
8740       </div>
8741       <div class="tags">
8742
8743
8744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8745
8746
8747       </div>
8748     </div>
8749     <div class="padding"></div>
8750
8751     <div class="entry">
8752       <div class="title">
8753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
8754       </div>
8755       <div class="date">
8756          5th May 2013
8757       </div>
8758       <div class="body">
8759         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
8760 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
8761 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
8762 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
8763 soon.</p>
8764
8765 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
8766 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
8767 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
8768 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
8769 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
8770 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
8771 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
8772 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
8773 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
8774 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
8775 Edu.</a>
8776
8777 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
8778 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
8779 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
8780 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
8781 follow.<p>
8782
8783       </div>
8784       <div class="tags">
8785
8786
8787         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8788
8789
8790       </div>
8791     </div>
8792     <div class="padding"></div>
8793
8794     <div class="entry">
8795       <div class="title">
8796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
8797       </div>
8798       <div class="date">
8799          3rd April 2013
8800       </div>
8801       <div class="body">
8802         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
8803 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
8804 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
8805 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
8806
8807 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
8808 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
8809 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
8810 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
8811 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
8812 BTS. :)</p>
8813
8814       </div>
8815       <div class="tags">
8816
8817
8818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8819
8820
8821       </div>
8822     </div>
8823     <div class="padding"></div>
8824
8825     <div class="entry">
8826       <div class="title">
8827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
8828       </div>
8829       <div class="date">
8830          2nd February 2013
8831       </div>
8832       <div class="body">
8833         <p>My
8834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
8835 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
8836 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
8837 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
8838 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
8839 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
8840 version too.</p>
8841
8842 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
8843 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
8844 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
8845 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
8846 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
8847 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
8848 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
8849 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
8850
8851 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
8852 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
8853 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
8854 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
8855 it. :)</p>
8856
8857 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8858 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8859 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8860
8861       </div>
8862       <div class="tags">
8863
8864
8865         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8866
8867
8868       </div>
8869     </div>
8870     <div class="padding"></div>
8871
8872     <div class="entry">
8873       <div class="title">
8874         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
8875       </div>
8876       <div class="date">
8877         22nd January 2013
8878       </div>
8879       <div class="body">
8880         <p>Yesterday, I
8881 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
8882 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
8883 pluggable hardware devices, which I
8884 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
8885 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
8886 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
8887 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
8888 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
8889 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
8890 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
8891 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
8892 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
8893 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
8894
8895 <pre>
8896 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
8897 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
8898 </pre>
8899
8900 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
8901 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
8902 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
8903 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
8904
8905 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
8906 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
8907 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
8908 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
8909 word.</p>
8910
8911 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
8912 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
8913 process.</p>
8914
8915 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
8916 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
8917
8918       </div>
8919       <div class="tags">
8920
8921
8922         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8923
8924
8925       </div>
8926     </div>
8927     <div class="padding"></div>
8928
8929     <div class="entry">
8930       <div class="title">
8931         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
8932       </div>
8933       <div class="date">
8934         21st January 2013
8935       </div>
8936       <div class="body">
8937         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
8938 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
8939 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
8940 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
8941 it, fetch the
8942 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
8943 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
8944 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
8945 autostart script.</p>
8946
8947 <p>The design is simple:</p>
8948
8949 <ul>
8950
8951 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
8952 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
8953
8954 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
8955 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
8956 initially did.</li>
8957
8958 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
8959 the APT database, a database
8960 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
8961 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
8962
8963 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
8964 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
8965 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
8966 package or packages.</li>
8967
8968 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
8969 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
8970
8971 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
8972 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
8973
8974 </ul>
8975
8976 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
8977 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
8978 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
8979 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
8980
8981 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
8982 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
8983 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
8984 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
8985 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
8986
8987 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
8988 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
8989 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
8990 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
8991 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
8992 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
8993 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
8994 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
8995
8996 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
8997 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
8998 '<tt>svn checkout
8999 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
9000 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
9001 devscripts package.</p>
9002
9003 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
9004 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
9005 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
9006 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
9007 instructions</a> for details.</p>
9008
9009       </div>
9010       <div class="tags">
9011
9012
9013         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9014
9015
9016       </div>
9017     </div>
9018     <div class="padding"></div>
9019
9020     <div class="entry">
9021       <div class="title">
9022         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
9023       </div>
9024       <div class="date">
9025         19th January 2013
9026       </div>
9027       <div class="body">
9028         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
9029 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
9030 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
9031 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
9032 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
9033 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
9034 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
9035 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
9036 not a durable solution.
9037
9038 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
9039 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
9040
9041 <ul>
9042
9043 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
9044   than A4).</li>
9045 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
9046 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
9047 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
9048 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
9049 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
9050 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
9051 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
9052 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
9053 size).</li>
9054 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
9055   X.org packages.</li>
9056 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
9057   the time).
9058
9059 </ul>
9060
9061 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
9062 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
9063 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
9064 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
9065 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
9066 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
9067 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
9068 still be useful.</p>
9069
9070 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
9071 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
9072 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
9073 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
9074 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
9075 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
9076
9077       </div>
9078       <div class="tags">
9079
9080
9081         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9082
9083
9084       </div>
9085     </div>
9086     <div class="padding"></div>
9087
9088     <div class="entry">
9089       <div class="title">
9090         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
9091       </div>
9092       <div class="date">
9093         18th January 2013
9094       </div>
9095       <div class="body">
9096         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
9097 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
9098 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
9099 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
9100 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
9101 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
9102 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
9103
9104 <pre>
9105 #!/usr/bin/python
9106 import sys
9107 import apt
9108 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
9109     cache = apt.Cache()
9110     cache.open(None)
9111     thepkgs = []
9112     for pkg in cache:
9113         version = pkg.candidate
9114         if version is None:
9115             version = pkg.installed
9116         if version is None:
9117             continue
9118         record = version.record
9119         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
9120             continue
9121         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
9122         for t in mime_types:
9123             t = t.rstrip().strip()
9124             if t == mimetype:
9125                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
9126     return thepkgs
9127 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
9128 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
9129     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
9130 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
9131 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
9132     print "  %s" %pkg
9133 </pre>
9134
9135 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
9136
9137 <pre>
9138 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
9139 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
9140   gecko-mediaplayer
9141 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
9142 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
9143   browser-plugin-gnash
9144 %
9145 </pre>
9146
9147 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
9148 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
9149 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
9150 anyone working on adding it?</p>
9151
9152 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
9153 request for icweasel support for this feature is
9154 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
9155 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
9156 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
9157 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
9158
9159       </div>
9160       <div class="tags">
9161
9162
9163         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9164
9165
9166       </div>
9167     </div>
9168     <div class="padding"></div>
9169
9170     <div class="entry">
9171       <div class="title">
9172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
9173       </div>
9174       <div class="date">
9175         16th January 2013
9176       </div>
9177       <div class="body">
9178         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
9179 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
9180 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
9181 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
9182 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
9183 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
9184 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
9185 downloaded by the browser.</p>
9186
9187 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
9188 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
9189 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
9190 can be found on the
9191 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
9192 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
9193 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
9194 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
9195 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
9196
9197 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
9198
9199 <pre>
9200   count MIME type
9201   ----- -----------------------
9202      32 text/plain
9203      30 audio/mpeg
9204      29 image/png
9205      28 image/jpeg
9206      27 application/ogg
9207      26 audio/x-mp3
9208      25 image/tiff
9209      25 image/gif
9210      22 image/bmp
9211      22 audio/x-wav
9212      20 audio/x-flac
9213      19 audio/x-mpegurl
9214      18 video/x-ms-asf
9215      18 audio/x-musepack
9216      18 audio/x-mpeg
9217      18 application/x-ogg
9218      17 video/mpeg
9219      17 audio/x-scpls
9220      17 audio/ogg
9221      16 video/x-ms-wmv
9222 </pre>
9223
9224 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
9225
9226 <pre>
9227   count MIME type
9228   ----- -----------------------
9229      33 text/plain
9230      32 image/png
9231      32 image/jpeg
9232      29 audio/mpeg
9233      27 image/gif
9234      26 image/tiff
9235      26 application/ogg
9236      25 audio/x-mp3
9237      22 image/bmp
9238      21 audio/x-wav
9239      19 audio/x-mpegurl
9240      19 audio/x-mpeg
9241      18 video/mpeg
9242      18 audio/x-scpls
9243      18 audio/x-flac
9244      18 application/x-ogg
9245      17 video/x-ms-asf
9246      17 text/html
9247      17 audio/x-musepack
9248      16 image/x-xbitmap
9249 </pre>
9250
9251 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
9252
9253 <pre>
9254   count MIME type
9255   ----- -----------------------
9256      31 text/plain
9257      31 image/png
9258      31 image/jpeg
9259      29 audio/mpeg
9260      28 application/ogg
9261      27 image/gif
9262      26 image/tiff
9263      26 audio/x-mp3
9264      23 audio/x-wav
9265      22 image/bmp
9266      21 audio/x-flac
9267      20 audio/x-mpegurl
9268      19 audio/x-mpeg
9269      18 video/x-ms-asf
9270      18 video/mpeg
9271      18 audio/x-scpls
9272      18 application/x-ogg
9273      17 audio/x-musepack
9274      16 video/x-ms-wmv
9275      16 video/x-msvideo
9276 </pre>
9277
9278 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
9279 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
9280 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
9281 issues.</p>
9282
9283 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
9284 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
9285
9286       </div>
9287       <div class="tags">
9288
9289
9290         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9291
9292
9293       </div>
9294     </div>
9295     <div class="padding"></div>
9296
9297     <div class="entry">
9298       <div class="title">
9299         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
9300       </div>
9301       <div class="date">
9302         15th January 2013
9303       </div>
9304       <div class="body">
9305         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
9306 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
9307 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
9308 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
9309 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
9310 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
9311 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
9312 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
9313 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
9314 packages.</p>
9315
9316 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
9317 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
9318 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
9319 modalias.</p>
9320
9321 <p><blockquote>
9322 Package: package-name
9323 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
9324 </blockquote></p>
9325
9326 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
9327 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
9328
9329 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
9330 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
9331
9332 <p><blockquote>
9333 Package: cheese
9334 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
9335 </blockquote></p>
9336
9337 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
9338 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
9339
9340 <p><blockquote>
9341 Package: pcmciautils
9342 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
9343 </blockquote></p>
9344
9345 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
9346 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
9347
9348 <p><blockquote>
9349 Package: colorhug-client
9350 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
9351 </blockquote></p>
9352
9353 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
9354 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
9355 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
9356
9357 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
9358 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
9359 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
9360 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
9361 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
9362 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
9363 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
9364 Raring.</p>
9365
9366 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
9367 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
9368 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
9369 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
9370 try the
9371 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
9372 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
9373 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
9374 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
9375
9376 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
9377 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
9378
9379 <p><blockquote>
9380 % ./hw-support-lookup
9381 <br>yubikey-personalization
9382 <br>%
9383 </blockquote></p>
9384
9385 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
9386 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
9387
9388 <p><blockquote>
9389 % ./hw-support-lookup
9390 <br>pcmciautils
9391 <br>%
9392 </blockquote></p>
9393
9394 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
9395 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
9396 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
9397
9398 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
9399 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
9400 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
9401 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
9402 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
9403 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
9404 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
9405 see if it work.</p>
9406
9407 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9408 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9409 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9410 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9411
9412       </div>
9413       <div class="tags">
9414
9415
9416         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9417
9418
9419       </div>
9420     </div>
9421     <div class="padding"></div>
9422
9423     <div class="entry">
9424       <div class="title">
9425         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
9426       </div>
9427       <div class="date">
9428         14th January 2013
9429       </div>
9430       <div class="body">
9431         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
9432 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
9433 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
9434 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
9435 in
9436 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9437 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
9438
9439 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
9440
9441 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
9442 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
9443 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
9444 &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;,
9445 &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
9446 &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;.
9447
9448 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
9449 this shell script:</p>
9450
9451 <pre>
9452 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
9453 </pre>
9454
9455 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
9456 using modinfo:</p>
9457
9458 <pre>
9459 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
9460 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
9461 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
9462 %
9463 </pre>
9464
9465 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
9466
9467 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
9468 Bridge memory controller:</p>
9469
9470 <p><blockquote>
9471 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
9472 </blockquote></p>
9473
9474 <p>This represent these values:</p>
9475
9476 <pre>
9477  v   00008086  (vendor)
9478  d   00002770  (device)
9479  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
9480  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
9481  bc  06        (bus class)
9482  sc  00        (bus subclass)
9483  i   00        (interface)
9484 </pre>
9485
9486 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
9487 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
9488 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
9489 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
9490
9491 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
9492 means.</p>
9493
9494 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
9495
9496 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
9497 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
9498
9499 <p><blockquote>
9500 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
9501 </blockquote></p>
9502
9503 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
9504
9505 <pre>
9506  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
9507  p    0001  (device product)
9508  d    0206  (bcddevice)
9509  dc     09  (device class)
9510  dsc    00  (device subclass)
9511  dp     00  (device protocol)
9512  ic     09  (interface class)
9513  isc    00  (interface subclass)
9514  ip     00  (interface protocol)
9515 </pre>
9516
9517 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
9518 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
9519 these alias entries show up:</p>
9520
9521 <p><blockquote>
9522 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
9523 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
9524 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
9525 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
9526 </blockquote></p>
9527
9528 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
9529 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
9530 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
9531
9532 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
9533
9534 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
9535 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
9536
9537 <p><blockquote>
9538 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9539 </blockquote></p>
9540
9541 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
9542
9543 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
9544
9545 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
9546 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
9547 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
9548
9549 <p><blockquote>
9550 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
9551 </blockquote></p>
9552
9553 <p>The values present are</p>
9554
9555 <pre>
9556  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
9557  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
9558  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
9559  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
9560  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
9561  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
9562  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
9563  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
9564  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
9565  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
9566  ct   10             (chassis type)
9567  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
9568 </pre>
9569
9570 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
9571 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
9572
9573 <pre>
9574   3 Desktop
9575   4 Low Profile Desktop
9576   5 Pizza Box
9577   6 Mini Tower
9578   7 Tower
9579   8 Portable
9580   9 Laptop
9581  10 Notebook
9582  11 Hand Held
9583  12 Docking Station
9584  13 All In One
9585  14 Sub Notebook
9586  15 Space-saving
9587  16 Lunch Box
9588  17 Main Server Chassis
9589  18 Expansion Chassis
9590  19 Sub Chassis
9591  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
9592  21 Peripheral Chassis
9593  22 RAID Chassis
9594  23 Rack Mount Chassis
9595  24 Sealed-case PC
9596  25 Multi-system
9597  26 CompactPCI
9598  27 AdvancedTCA
9599  28 Blade
9600  29 Blade Enclosing
9601 </pre>
9602
9603 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
9604 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
9605 claim it is a desktop.</p>
9606
9607 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
9608
9609 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
9610 test machine:</p>
9611
9612 <p><blockquote>
9613 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
9614 </blockquote></p>
9615
9616 <p>The values present are</p>
9617
9618 <pre>
9619   ty  01  (type)
9620   pr  00  (prototype)
9621   id  00  (id)
9622   ex  00  (extra)
9623 </pre>
9624
9625 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
9626 the valid values are.</p>
9627
9628 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
9629
9630 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
9631 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
9632 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
9633 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
9634 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
9635 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
9636 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
9637
9638 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
9639
9640 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
9641 one can use the following shell script:</p>
9642
9643 <pre>
9644   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
9645     echo "$id" ; \
9646     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
9647   done
9648 </pre>
9649
9650 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
9651 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
9652
9653 <pre>
9654   acpi:ACPI0003:
9655     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
9656   acpi:device:
9657   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
9658   acpi:IBM0068:
9659     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
9660     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
9661     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
9662     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
9663   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9664     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
9665     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
9666     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
9667   [...]
9668 </pre>
9669
9670 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9671 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9672 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9673 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9674
9675 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
9676 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
9677 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
9678
9679       </div>
9680       <div class="tags">
9681
9682
9683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9684
9685
9686       </div>
9687     </div>
9688     <div class="padding"></div>
9689
9690     <div class="entry">
9691       <div class="title">
9692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
9693       </div>
9694       <div class="date">
9695         10th January 2013
9696       </div>
9697       <div class="body">
9698         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
9699 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
9700 Launcher and updated the Debian package
9701 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
9702 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
9703 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
9704 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
9705 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
9706 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
9707 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
9708 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
9709 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
9710 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
9711 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
9712 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
9713 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
9714 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
9715 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
9716
9717       </div>
9718       <div class="tags">
9719
9720
9721         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9722
9723
9724       </div>
9725     </div>
9726     <div class="padding"></div>
9727
9728     <div class="entry">
9729       <div class="title">
9730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
9731       </div>
9732       <div class="date">
9733          9th January 2013
9734       </div>
9735       <div class="body">
9736         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
9737 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
9738 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
9739 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
9740 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
9741 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
9742 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
9743 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
9744 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
9745 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
9746 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
9747
9748 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
9749 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
9750 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
9751 simple:
9752
9753 <ul>
9754
9755 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
9756   starting when a user log in.</li>
9757
9758 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
9759   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
9760
9761 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
9762   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
9763   packages.</li>
9764
9765 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
9766   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
9767
9768 </ul>
9769
9770 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
9771 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
9772 discover database to find packages and
9773 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
9774 packages.</p>
9775
9776 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
9777 draft package is now checked into
9778 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9779 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
9780 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
9781 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
9782 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
9783 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
9784 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
9785 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
9786 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
9787 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
9788 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
9789 because of the freeze).</p>
9790
9791 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
9792 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
9793 inserted):</p>
9794
9795 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
9796
9797 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
9798 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
9799 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
9800
9801 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
9802 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
9803 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
9804 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
9805 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
9806 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
9807 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
9808
9809 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
9810 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
9811 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
9812 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
9813 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
9814 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
9815 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
9816 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
9817 not be installed?</p>
9818
9819 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
9820 please send me an email. :)</p>
9821
9822       </div>
9823       <div class="tags">
9824
9825
9826         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9827
9828
9829       </div>
9830     </div>
9831     <div class="padding"></div>
9832
9833     <div class="entry">
9834       <div class="title">
9835         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
9836       </div>
9837       <div class="date">
9838          2nd January 2013
9839       </div>
9840       <div class="body">
9841         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
9842 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
9843 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
9844 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
9845 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
9846 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
9847 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
9848 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
9849 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
9850 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
9851
9852 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
9853 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
9854 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
9855
9856       </div>
9857       <div class="tags">
9858
9859
9860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9861
9862
9863       </div>
9864     </div>
9865     <div class="padding"></div>
9866
9867     <div class="entry">
9868       <div class="title">
9869         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
9870       </div>
9871       <div class="date">
9872         25th December 2012
9873       </div>
9874       <div class="body">
9875         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
9876 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
9877
9878 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
9879 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
9880 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
9881 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
9882 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
9883 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
9884 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
9885 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
9886 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
9887 name.</p>
9888
9889 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
9890 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
9891 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
9892
9893 <blockquote><pre>
9894 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
9895 cd bitcoin
9896 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
9897 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
9898 </pre></blockquote>
9899
9900 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
9901 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
9902 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
9903 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
9904 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
9905 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
9906 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
9907 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
9908 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
9909
9910 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9911 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9912 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9913
9914       </div>
9915       <div class="tags">
9916
9917
9918         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9919
9920
9921       </div>
9922     </div>
9923     <div class="padding"></div>
9924
9925     <div class="entry">
9926       <div class="title">
9927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
9928       </div>
9929       <div class="date">
9930         21st December 2012
9931       </div>
9932       <div class="body">
9933         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
9934 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
9935 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
9936 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
9937 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
9938 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
9939 is now maintained by a
9940 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
9941 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
9942 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
9943 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
9944 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
9945 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
9946 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
9947 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
9948 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
9949 Corallo in a
9950 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
9951 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
9952 Debian package.</p>
9953
9954 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
9955 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
9956 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
9957 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
9958 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
9959 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
9960 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
9961 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
9962 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
9963 new version to unstable.
9964
9965 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
9966 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
9967 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
9968 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
9969 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
9970 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
9971 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
9972 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
9973 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
9974 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
9975 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
9976 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
9977 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
9978 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
9979 have not tested them.</p>
9980
9981 <p>My
9982 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
9983 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
9984 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
9985 years ago, as can be
9986 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
9987 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
9988 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
9989 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
9990 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
9991 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
9992 the same address as last time,
9993 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9994
9995       </div>
9996       <div class="tags">
9997
9998
9999         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10000
10001
10002       </div>
10003     </div>
10004     <div class="padding"></div>
10005
10006     <div class="entry">
10007       <div class="title">
10008         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
10009       </div>
10010       <div class="date">
10011          7th September 2012
10012       </div>
10013       <div class="body">
10014         <p>As I
10015 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
10016 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
10017 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
10018 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
10019 repository for the project</a>.</p>
10020
10021 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
10022 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
10023 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
10024 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
10025
10026 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
10027 PostScript formats at
10028 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
10029 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
10030
10031       </div>
10032       <div class="tags">
10033
10034
10035         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
10036
10037
10038       </div>
10039     </div>
10040     <div class="padding"></div>
10041
10042     <div class="entry">
10043       <div class="title">
10044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
10045       </div>
10046       <div class="date">
10047         16th August 2012
10048       </div>
10049       <div class="body">
10050         <p>I dag fyller
10051 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
10052 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
10053 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
10054
10055       </div>
10056       <div class="tags">
10057
10058
10059         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
10060
10061
10062       </div>
10063     </div>
10064     <div class="padding"></div>
10065
10066     <div class="entry">
10067       <div class="title">
10068         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
10069       </div>
10070       <div class="date">
10071         24th June 2012
10072       </div>
10073       <div class="body">
10074         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
10075 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
10076 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
10077 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
10078 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
10079 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
10080 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
10081 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
10082 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
10083 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
10084 missing in my book.</p>
10085
10086 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
10087 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
10088 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
10089 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
10090 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
10091 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
10092 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
10093
10094       </div>
10095       <div class="tags">
10096
10097
10098         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
10099
10100
10101       </div>
10102     </div>
10103     <div class="padding"></div>
10104
10105     <div class="entry">
10106       <div class="title">
10107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
10108       </div>
10109       <div class="date">
10110         21st November 2011
10111       </div>
10112       <div class="body">
10113         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
10114 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
10115 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
10116 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
10117 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
10118 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
10119 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
10120 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
10121 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
10122 the tools to do so.</p>
10123
10124 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
10125 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
10126 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
10127 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
10128
10129 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
10130 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
10131 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
10132 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
10133 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
10134 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
10135 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
10136 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
10137
10138 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
10139 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
10140 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
10141
10142 <p><pre>
10143 #!/usr/bin/perl
10144 use strict;
10145 use warnings;
10146 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
10147 BEGIN {
10148     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
10149     my %rhelmodules = (
10150         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
10151         );
10152     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
10153         eval "use $module;";
10154         if ($@) {
10155             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
10156             system("yum install -y $pkg");
10157             eval "use $module;";
10158         }
10159     }
10160 }
10161 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
10162
10163 upgrade_dell();
10164
10165 exit 0;
10166
10167 sub run_firmware_script {
10168     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
10169     unless ($script) {
10170         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
10171         exit 1
10172     }
10173     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
10174
10175     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
10176         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
10177     } else {
10178         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
10179     }
10180 }
10181
10182 sub run_firmware_scripts {
10183     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
10184     # Run firmware packages
10185     for my $dir (@dirs) {
10186         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
10187         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
10188         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
10189             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
10190             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
10191         }
10192         closedir $dh;
10193     }
10194 }
10195
10196 sub download {
10197     my $url = shift;
10198     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
10199     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
10200 }
10201
10202 sub upgrade_dell {
10203     my @dirs;
10204     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
10205     chomp $product;
10206
10207     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
10208
10209         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
10210         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
10211
10212         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
10213             CLEANUP => 1
10214             );
10215         chdir($tmpdir);
10216         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
10217         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
10218         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
10219         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
10220         my $fwopts = "-q";
10221         if (@paths) {
10222             for my $url (@paths) {
10223                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
10224             }
10225             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
10226         } else {
10227             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
10228             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
10229         }
10230         chdir('/');
10231     } else {
10232         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
10233         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
10234     }
10235 }
10236
10237 sub fetch_dell_fw {
10238     my $path = shift;
10239     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
10240     download($url);
10241 }
10242
10243 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
10244 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
10245 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
10246 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
10247     my $filename = shift;
10248
10249     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
10250     chomp $product;
10251     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
10252
10253     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
10254
10255     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
10256     my @paths;
10257     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
10258         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
10259         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
10260         my $oscode;
10261         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
10262             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
10263         } else {
10264             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
10265         }
10266         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
10267         {
10268             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
10269         }
10270     }
10271     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
10272         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
10273
10274         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
10275         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
10276
10277         my $cpath = $component->{path};
10278         for my $path (@paths) {
10279             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
10280                 push(@paths, $cpath);
10281             }
10282         }
10283     }
10284     return @paths;
10285 }
10286 </pre>
10287
10288 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
10289 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
10290 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
10291 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
10292 outdated.</p>
10293
10294       </div>
10295       <div class="tags">
10296
10297
10298         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10299
10300
10301       </div>
10302     </div>
10303     <div class="padding"></div>
10304
10305     <div class="entry">
10306       <div class="title">
10307         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
10308       </div>
10309       <div class="date">
10310          4th August 2011
10311       </div>
10312       <div class="body">
10313         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
10314 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
10315 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
10316 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
10317 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
10318 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
10319 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
10320 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
10321 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
10322
10323 <p><blockquote>
10324 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
10325 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
10326 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
10327 </blockquote></p>
10328
10329 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
10330 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
10331 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
10332 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
10333 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
10334 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
10335 hard to explain.</p>
10336
10337 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
10338 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
10339 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
10340 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
10341 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
10342 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
10343 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
10344 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
10345 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
10346 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
10347 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
10348 mode).</p>
10349
10350 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
10351 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
10352 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
10353 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
10354 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
10355 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
10356 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
10357 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
10358 after visiting single user mode.</p>
10359
10360 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
10361 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
10362 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
10363 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
10364 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
10365 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
10366 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
10367 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
10368
10369 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
10370 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
10371 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
10372
10373       </div>
10374       <div class="tags">
10375
10376
10377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10378
10379
10380       </div>
10381     </div>
10382     <div class="padding"></div>
10383
10384     <div class="entry">
10385       <div class="title">
10386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
10387       </div>
10388       <div class="date">
10389         30th July 2011
10390       </div>
10391       <div class="body">
10392         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
10393 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
10394 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
10395 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
10396 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
10397 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
10398 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
10399 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
10400 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
10401 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
10402 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
10403 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
10404 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
10405
10406 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
10407 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
10408 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
10409 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
10410 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
10411 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
10412 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
10413 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
10414 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
10415
10416 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
10417 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
10418 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
10419 is presented.</p>
10420
10421 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
10422 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
10423 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
10424 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
10425 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
10426 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
10427 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
10428 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
10429 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
10430 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
10431 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
10432 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
10433 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
10434 find time to push this forward.</p>
10435
10436       </div>
10437       <div class="tags">
10438
10439
10440         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10441
10442
10443       </div>
10444     </div>
10445     <div class="padding"></div>
10446
10447     <div class="entry">
10448       <div class="title">
10449         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
10450       </div>
10451       <div class="date">
10452         29th July 2011
10453       </div>
10454       <div class="body">
10455         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
10456 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
10457 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
10458 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
10459 issues.</p>
10460
10461 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
10462 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
10463 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
10464
10465 <ol>
10466
10467 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
10468 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
10469 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
10470 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
10471 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
10472 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
10473 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
10474 Debian.</li>
10475
10476 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
10477 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
10478 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
10479 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
10480 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
10481 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
10482 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
10483 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
10484 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
10485 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
10486 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
10487 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
10488 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
10489
10490 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
10491 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
10492 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
10493 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
10494 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
10495 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
10496 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
10497 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
10498 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
10499 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
10500
10501 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
10502 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
10503 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
10504 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
10505 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
10506 latter behaviour.</li>
10507
10508 </ol>
10509
10510 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
10511 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
10512 it do not matter much.</p>
10513
10514 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
10515 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
10516 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
10517
10518       </div>
10519       <div class="tags">
10520
10521
10522         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10523
10524
10525       </div>
10526     </div>
10527     <div class="padding"></div>
10528
10529     <div class="entry">
10530       <div class="title">
10531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
10532       </div>
10533       <div class="date">
10534         26th July 2011
10535       </div>
10536       <div class="body">
10537         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
10538 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
10539 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
10540 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
10541 security support for a few years.</p>
10542
10543 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
10544 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
10545 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
10546 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
10547 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
10548 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
10549 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
10550 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
10551 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
10552 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
10553 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
10554 easier in the future.</p>
10555
10556 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
10557 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
10558 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
10559 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
10560 do not have time for.</p>
10561
10562       </div>
10563       <div class="tags">
10564
10565
10566         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
10567
10568
10569       </div>
10570     </div>
10571     <div class="padding"></div>
10572
10573     <div class="entry">
10574       <div class="title">
10575         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
10576       </div>
10577       <div class="date">
10578          3rd April 2011
10579       </div>
10580       <div class="body">
10581         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
10582 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
10583 update in English.</p>
10584
10585 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
10586 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
10587 of the British service
10588 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
10589 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
10590 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
10591 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
10592 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
10593 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
10594 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
10595 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
10596 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
10597 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
10598 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
10599 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
10600 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
10601
10602 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
10603 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
10604 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
10605 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
10606 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
10607 public infrastructure.</p>
10608
10609 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
10610 such service?</p>
10611
10612       </div>
10613       <div class="tags">
10614
10615
10616         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
10617
10618
10619       </div>
10620     </div>
10621     <div class="padding"></div>
10622
10623     <div class="entry">
10624       <div class="title">
10625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
10626       </div>
10627       <div class="date">
10628         28th January 2011
10629       </div>
10630       <div class="body">
10631         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
10632 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
10633 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
10634 available on the Internet, and check our locally
10635 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
10636 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
10637 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
10638 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
10639 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
10640 out which security holes were present in our free software
10641 collection.</p>
10642
10643 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
10644 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
10645 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
10646 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
10647 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
10648 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
10649 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
10650 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
10651 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
10652 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
10653 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
10654 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
10655 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
10656 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
10657 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
10658 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
10659
10660 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
10661 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
10662 check out, one could look up
10663 <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
10664 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
10665 The most recent one is
10666 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
10667 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
10668 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
10669
10670 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
10671 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
10672 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
10673 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
10674 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
10675 security issues out.</p>
10676
10677 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
10678 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
10679 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
10680 RHEL is providing
10681 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
10682 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
10683 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
10684
10685 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
10686 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
10687 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
10688 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
10689 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
10690 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
10691 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
10692 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
10693 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
10694 established soon.</p>
10695
10696 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
10697 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
10698 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
10699 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
10700 for their packages.</p>
10701
10702       </div>
10703       <div class="tags">
10704
10705
10706         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10707
10708
10709       </div>
10710     </div>
10711     <div class="padding"></div>
10712
10713     <div class="entry">
10714       <div class="title">
10715         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
10716       </div>
10717       <div class="date">
10718         23rd January 2011
10719       </div>
10720       <div class="body">
10721         <p>In the
10722 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
10723 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
10724 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
10725 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
10726 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
10727 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
10728 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
10729 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
10730 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
10731 one of my machines like this:</p>
10732
10733 <pre>
10734 loaded modules:
10735 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
10736 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
10737 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
10738 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
10739 10de:03ec pata_amd
10740 10de:03f6 sata_nv
10741 1022:1103 k8temp
10742 109e:036e bttv
10743 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
10744 11ab:4364 sky2
10745 </pre>
10746
10747 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
10748 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
10749
10750 <pre>
10751 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
10752     echo loaded pci modules:
10753     (
10754         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
10755         for address in * ; do
10756             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
10757                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
10758                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
10759                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
10760                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
10761                     echo "$id $module"
10762                 fi
10763             fi
10764         done
10765     )
10766     echo
10767 fi
10768 </pre>
10769
10770 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
10771 mappings:</p>
10772
10773 <pre>
10774 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
10775     echo loaded usb modules:
10776     (
10777         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
10778         for address in * ; do
10779             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
10780                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
10781                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
10782                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
10783                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
10784                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
10785                         echo "$id $module"
10786                     fi
10787                 fi
10788             fi
10789         done
10790     )
10791     echo
10792 fi
10793 </pre>
10794
10795 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
10796 well.</p>
10797
10798       </div>
10799       <div class="tags">
10800
10801
10802         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10803
10804
10805       </div>
10806     </div>
10807     <div class="padding"></div>
10808
10809     <div class="entry">
10810       <div class="title">
10811         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
10812       </div>
10813       <div class="date">
10814         22nd December 2010
10815       </div>
10816       <div class="body">
10817         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
10818 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
10819 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
10820 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
10821 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
10822 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
10823 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
10824 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
10825 university.</p>
10826
10827 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
10828 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
10829 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
10830 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
10831 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
10832 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
10833 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
10834 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
10835
10836 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
10837 I perform on a new model.</p>
10838
10839 <ul>
10840
10841 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
10842 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
10843 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
10844
10845 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
10846 installation, X.org is working.</li>
10847
10848 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
10849 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
10850 reported by the program.</li>
10851
10852 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
10853 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
10854 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
10855 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
10856 normally test this by playing
10857 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
10858 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
10859
10860 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
10861 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
10862
10863 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
10864 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
10865
10866 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
10867 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
10868
10869 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
10870 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
10871 few.</li>
10872
10873 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
10874 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
10875 notice this.</li>
10876
10877 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
10878 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
10879 resume.</li>
10880
10881 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
10882 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
10883 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
10884 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
10885 not.</li>
10886
10887 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
10888 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
10889 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
10890 existence.</li>
10891
10892 </ul>
10893
10894 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
10895 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
10896 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
10897 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
10898 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
10899 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
10900 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
10901 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
10902
10903       </div>
10904       <div class="tags">
10905
10906
10907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10908
10909
10910       </div>
10911     </div>
10912     <div class="padding"></div>
10913
10914     <div class="entry">
10915       <div class="title">
10916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
10917       </div>
10918       <div class="date">
10919         11th December 2010
10920       </div>
10921       <div class="body">
10922         <p>As I continue to explore
10923 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
10924 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
10925 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
10926
10927 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
10928 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
10929 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
10930 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
10931 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
10932 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
10933 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
10934 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
10935 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
10936 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
10937 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
10938 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
10939 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
10940 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
10941 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
10942 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
10943 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
10944 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
10945 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
10946 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
10947
10948 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
10949 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
10950 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
10951 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
10952 If the Skolelinux foundation
10953 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
10954 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
10955 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
10956 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
10957 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
10958 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
10959 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
10960 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
10961
10962 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
10963 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
10964 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
10965 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
10966 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
10967 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
10968 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
10969 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
10970 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
10971 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
10972 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
10973 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
10974 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
10975 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
10976 currencies.</p>
10977
10978 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
10979 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
10980 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
10981 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
10982 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
10983 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
10984 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
10985 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
10986 BitCoins.  Check out
10987 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
10988 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
10989 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
10990 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
10991 yet.</p>
10992
10993 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
10994 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
10995 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
10996 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
10997 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
10998
10999       </div>
11000       <div class="tags">
11001
11002
11003         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
11004
11005
11006       </div>
11007     </div>
11008     <div class="padding"></div>
11009
11010     <div class="entry">
11011       <div class="title">
11012         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
11013       </div>
11014       <div class="date">
11015         10th December 2010
11016       </div>
11017       <div class="body">
11018         <p>With this weeks lawless
11019 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
11020 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
11021 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
11022 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
11023 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
11024 A blog post from
11025 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
11026 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
11027 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
11028 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
11029 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
11030 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
11031 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
11032
11033 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
11034 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
11035 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
11036 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
11037 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
11038 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
11039 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
11040 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
11041 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
11042 Debian</a> soon.</p>
11043
11044 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
11045 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
11046 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
11047 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
11048 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
11049 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
11050 you can even get
11051 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
11052 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
11053 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
11054 on the current exchange rates.</p>
11055
11056 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
11057 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
11058 donations to the address
11059 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
11060
11061       </div>
11062       <div class="tags">
11063
11064
11065         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
11066
11067
11068       </div>
11069     </div>
11070     <div class="padding"></div>
11071
11072     <div class="entry">
11073       <div class="title">
11074         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
11075       </div>
11076       <div class="date">
11077         27th November 2010
11078       </div>
11079       <div class="body">
11080         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
11081 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
11082 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
11083 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
11084 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
11085 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
11086 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
11087 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
11088
11089 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
11090 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
11091 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
11092 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
11093 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
11094 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
11095 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
11096 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
11097 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
11098 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
11099 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
11100
11101 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
11102 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
11103 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
11104 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
11105 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
11106 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
11107 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
11108 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
11109 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
11110 what is going on.</p>
11111
11112       </div>
11113       <div class="tags">
11114
11115
11116         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11117
11118
11119       </div>
11120     </div>
11121     <div class="padding"></div>
11122
11123     <div class="entry">
11124       <div class="title">
11125         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
11126       </div>
11127       <div class="date">
11128         22nd November 2010
11129       </div>
11130       <div class="body">
11131         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
11132 upgrade testing of the
11133 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
11134 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
11135 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
11136 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
11137
11138 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
11139
11140 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11141
11142 <blockquote><p>
11143   apache2.2-bin
11144   aptdaemon
11145   baobab
11146   binfmt-support
11147   browser-plugin-gnash
11148   cheese-common
11149   cli-common
11150   cups-pk-helper
11151   dmz-cursor-theme
11152   empathy
11153   empathy-common
11154   freedesktop-sound-theme
11155   freeglut3
11156   gconf-defaults-service
11157   gdm-themes
11158   gedit-plugins
11159   geoclue
11160   geoclue-hostip
11161   geoclue-localnet
11162   geoclue-manual
11163   geoclue-yahoo
11164   gnash
11165   gnash-common
11166   gnome
11167   gnome-backgrounds
11168   gnome-cards-data
11169   gnome-codec-install
11170   gnome-core
11171   gnome-desktop-environment
11172   gnome-disk-utility
11173   gnome-screenshot
11174   gnome-search-tool
11175   gnome-session-canberra
11176   gnome-system-log
11177   gnome-themes-extras
11178   gnome-themes-more
11179   gnome-user-share
11180   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
11181   gstreamer0.10-tools
11182   gtk2-engines
11183   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
11184   gtk2-engines-smooth
11185   hamster-applet
11186   libapache2-mod-dnssd
11187   libapr1
11188   libaprutil1
11189   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
11190   libaprutil1-ldap
11191   libart2.0-cil
11192   libboost-date-time1.42.0
11193   libboost-python1.42.0
11194   libboost-thread1.42.0
11195   libchamplain-0.4-0
11196   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
11197   libcheese-gtk18
11198   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
11199   libcryptui0
11200   libdiscid0
11201   libelf1
11202   libepc-1.0-2
11203   libepc-common
11204   libepc-ui-1.0-2
11205   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
11206   libfreerdp0
11207   libgconf2.0-cil
11208   libgdata-common
11209   libgdata7
11210   libgdu-gtk0
11211   libgee2
11212   libgeoclue0
11213   libgexiv2-0
11214   libgif4
11215   libglade2.0-cil
11216   libglib2.0-cil
11217   libgmime2.4-cil
11218   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
11219   libgnome2.24-cil
11220   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
11221   libgpod-common
11222   libgpod4
11223   libgtk2.0-cil
11224   libgtkglext1
11225   libgtksourceview2.0-common
11226   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
11227   libmono-addins0.2-cil
11228   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
11229   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
11230   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
11231   libmono-posix2.0-cil
11232   libmono-security2.0-cil
11233   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
11234   libmono-system2.0-cil
11235   libmtp8
11236   libmusicbrainz3-6
11237   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
11238   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
11239   libopal3.6.8
11240   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
11241   libpt2.6.7
11242   libpython2.6
11243   librpm1
11244   librpmio1
11245   libsdl1.2debian
11246   libsrtp0
11247   libssh-4
11248   libtelepathy-farsight0
11249   libtelepathy-glib0
11250   libtidy-0.99-0
11251   media-player-info
11252   mesa-utils
11253   mono-2.0-gac
11254   mono-gac
11255   mono-runtime
11256   nautilus-sendto
11257   nautilus-sendto-empathy
11258   p7zip-full
11259   pkg-config
11260   python-aptdaemon
11261   python-aptdaemon-gtk
11262   python-axiom
11263   python-beautifulsoup
11264   python-bugbuddy
11265   python-clientform
11266   python-coherence
11267   python-configobj
11268   python-crypto
11269   python-cupshelpers
11270   python-elementtree
11271   python-epsilon
11272   python-evolution
11273   python-feedparser
11274   python-gdata
11275   python-gdbm
11276   python-gst0.10
11277   python-gtkglext1
11278   python-gtksourceview2
11279   python-httplib2
11280   python-louie
11281   python-mako
11282   python-markupsafe
11283   python-mechanize
11284   python-nevow
11285   python-notify
11286   python-opengl
11287   python-openssl
11288   python-pam
11289   python-pkg-resources
11290   python-pyasn1
11291   python-pysqlite2
11292   python-rdflib
11293   python-serial
11294   python-tagpy
11295   python-twisted-bin
11296   python-twisted-conch
11297   python-twisted-core
11298   python-twisted-web
11299   python-utidylib
11300   python-webkit
11301   python-xdg
11302   python-zope.interface
11303   remmina
11304   remmina-plugin-data
11305   remmina-plugin-rdp
11306   remmina-plugin-vnc
11307   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
11308   rhythmbox-plugins
11309   rpm-common
11310   rpm2cpio
11311   seahorse-plugins
11312   shotwell
11313   software-center
11314   system-config-printer-udev
11315   telepathy-gabble
11316   telepathy-mission-control-5
11317   telepathy-salut
11318   tomboy
11319   totem
11320   totem-coherence
11321   totem-mozilla
11322   totem-plugins
11323   transmission-common
11324   xdg-user-dirs
11325   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
11326   xserver-xephyr
11327 </p></blockquote>
11328
11329 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11330
11331 <blockquote><p>
11332   cheese
11333   ekiga
11334   eog
11335   epiphany-extensions
11336   evolution-exchange
11337   fast-user-switch-applet
11338   file-roller
11339   gcalctool
11340   gconf-editor
11341   gdm
11342   gedit
11343   gedit-common
11344   gnome-games
11345   gnome-games-data
11346   gnome-nettool
11347   gnome-system-tools
11348   gnome-themes
11349   gnuchess
11350   gucharmap
11351   guile-1.8-libs
11352   libavahi-ui0
11353   libdmx1
11354   libgalago3
11355   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
11356   libgtksourceview2.0-0
11357   liblircclient0
11358   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
11359   libspeexdsp1
11360   libsvga1
11361   rhythmbox
11362   seahorse
11363   sound-juicer
11364   system-config-printer
11365   totem-common
11366   transmission-gtk
11367   vinagre
11368   vino
11369 </p></blockquote>
11370
11371 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11372
11373 <blockquote><p>
11374   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11375 </p></blockquote>
11376
11377 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11378
11379 <blockquote><p>
11380 [nothing]
11381 </p></blockquote>
11382
11383 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
11384
11385 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11386
11387 <blockquote><p>
11388   ksmserver
11389 </p></blockquote>
11390
11391 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11392
11393 <blockquote><p>
11394   kwin
11395   network-manager-kde
11396 </p></blockquote>
11397
11398 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11399
11400 <blockquote><p>
11401   arts
11402   dolphin
11403   freespacenotifier
11404   google-gadgets-gst
11405   google-gadgets-xul
11406   kappfinder
11407   kcalc
11408   kcharselect
11409   kde-core
11410   kde-plasma-desktop
11411   kde-standard
11412   kde-window-manager
11413   kdeartwork
11414   kdeartwork-emoticons
11415   kdeartwork-style
11416   kdeartwork-theme-icon
11417   kdebase
11418   kdebase-apps
11419   kdebase-workspace
11420   kdebase-workspace-bin
11421   kdebase-workspace-data
11422   kdeeject
11423   kdelibs
11424   kdeplasma-addons
11425   kdeutils
11426   kdewallpapers
11427   kdf
11428   kfloppy
11429   kgpg
11430   khelpcenter4
11431   kinfocenter
11432   konq-plugins-l10n
11433   konqueror-nsplugins
11434   kscreensaver
11435   kscreensaver-xsavers
11436   ktimer
11437   kwrite
11438   libgle3
11439   libkde4-ruby1.8
11440   libkonq5
11441   libkonq5-templates
11442   libnetpbm10
11443   libplasma-ruby
11444   libplasma-ruby1.8
11445   libqt4-ruby1.8
11446   marble-data
11447   marble-plugins
11448   netpbm
11449   nuvola-icon-theme
11450   plasma-dataengines-workspace
11451   plasma-desktop
11452   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
11453   plasma-runners-addons
11454   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
11455   plasma-scriptengine-python
11456   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
11457   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
11458   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
11459   plasma-scriptengines
11460   plasma-wallpapers-addons
11461   plasma-widget-folderview
11462   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
11463   ruby
11464   sweeper
11465   update-notifier-kde
11466   xscreensaver-data-extra
11467   xscreensaver-gl
11468   xscreensaver-gl-extra
11469   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
11470 </p></blockquote>
11471
11472 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11473
11474 <blockquote><p>
11475   ark
11476   google-gadgets-common
11477   google-gadgets-qt
11478   htdig
11479   kate
11480   kdebase-bin
11481   kdebase-data
11482   kdepasswd
11483   kfind
11484   klipper
11485   konq-plugins
11486   konqueror
11487   ksysguard
11488   ksysguardd
11489   libarchive1
11490   libcln6
11491   libeet1
11492   libeina-svn-06
11493   libggadget-1.0-0b
11494   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
11495   libgps19
11496   libkdecorations4
11497   libkephal4
11498   libkonq4
11499   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
11500   libkscreensaver5
11501   libksgrd4
11502   libksignalplotter4
11503   libkunitconversion4
11504   libkwineffects1a
11505   libmarblewidget4
11506   libntrack-qt4-1
11507   libntrack0
11508   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
11509   libplasmaclock4a
11510   libplasmagenericshell4
11511   libprocesscore4a
11512   libprocessui4a
11513   libqalculate5
11514   libqedje0a
11515   libqtruby4shared2
11516   libqzion0a
11517   libruby1.8
11518   libscim8c2a
11519   libsmokekdecore4-3
11520   libsmokekdeui4-3
11521   libsmokekfile3
11522   libsmokekhtml3
11523   libsmokekio3
11524   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
11525   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
11526   libsmokekparts3
11527   libsmokektexteditor3
11528   libsmokekutils3
11529   libsmokenepomuk3
11530   libsmokephonon3
11531   libsmokeplasma3
11532   libsmokeqtcore4-3
11533   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
11534   libsmokeqtgui4-3
11535   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
11536   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
11537   libsmokeqtscript4-3
11538   libsmokeqtsql4-3
11539   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
11540   libsmokeqttest4-3
11541   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
11542   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
11543   libsmokeqtxml4-3
11544   libsmokesolid3
11545   libsmokesoprano3
11546   libtaskmanager4a
11547   libtidy-0.99-0
11548   libweather-ion4a
11549   libxklavier16
11550   libxxf86misc1
11551   okteta
11552   oxygencursors
11553   plasma-dataengines-addons
11554   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
11555   plasma-widget-lancelot
11556   plasma-widgets-addons
11557   plasma-widgets-workspace
11558   polkit-kde-1
11559   ruby1.8
11560   systemsettings
11561   update-notifier-common
11562 </p></blockquote>
11563
11564 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
11565 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
11566 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
11567 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
11568
11569       </div>
11570       <div class="tags">
11571
11572
11573         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11574
11575
11576       </div>
11577     </div>
11578     <div class="padding"></div>
11579
11580     <div class="entry">
11581       <div class="title">
11582         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
11583       </div>
11584       <div class="date">
11585         22nd November 2010
11586       </div>
11587       <div class="body">
11588         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
11589 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
11590 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
11591 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
11592 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
11593 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
11594 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
11595 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
11596 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
11597
11598 <p>I found
11599 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
11600 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
11601 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
11602 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
11603 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
11604 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
11605
11606 <pre>
11607 #!/bin/sh
11608
11609 # Based on
11610 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
11611
11612 set -e
11613 set -x
11614
11615 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
11616     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
11617     exit 1
11618 else
11619     host="$1"
11620 fi
11621
11622 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
11623     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
11624     exit 1
11625 fi
11626
11627 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
11628 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
11629 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
11630 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
11631
11632 img=$host.img
11633 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
11634 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
11635
11636 parted $img mklabel msdos
11637 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
11638 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
11639 parted $img set 1 boot on
11640
11641 modprobe dm-mod
11642 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
11643 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
11644
11645 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
11646 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
11647 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
11648
11649 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
11650 losetup -d /dev/loop0
11651 </pre>
11652
11653 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
11654 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
11655
11656 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
11657 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
11658 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
11659 seem to work just fine.</p>
11660
11661       </div>
11662       <div class="tags">
11663
11664
11665         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11666
11667
11668       </div>
11669     </div>
11670     <div class="padding"></div>
11671
11672     <div class="entry">
11673       <div class="title">
11674         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
11675       </div>
11676       <div class="date">
11677         20th November 2010
11678       </div>
11679       <div class="body">
11680         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
11681 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
11682 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
11683 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
11684
11685 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
11686 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
11687 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
11688
11689 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
11690
11691 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11692
11693 <blockquote><p>
11694   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
11695   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
11696   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
11697   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
11698   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
11699   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
11700   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
11701   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
11702   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
11703   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
11704   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
11705   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
11706   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
11707   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
11708   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
11709   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
11710   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
11711   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
11712   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
11713   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
11714   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
11715   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
11716   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
11717   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
11718   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
11719   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
11720   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
11721   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
11722   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
11723   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
11724   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
11725   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
11726   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
11727   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
11728   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
11729   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
11730   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
11731   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
11732   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
11733   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
11734   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
11735   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
11736   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
11737   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
11738   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
11739   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
11740   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
11741   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
11742   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
11743   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
11744   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
11745   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
11746   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
11747   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
11748   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
11749   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
11750   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
11751   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
11752   zip
11753 </p></blockquote>
11754
11755 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
11756
11757 <blockquote><p>
11758   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
11759   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
11760   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
11761   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
11762   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
11763   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
11764   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
11765   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
11766   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
11767   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
11768   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
11769   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
11770   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
11771   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11772   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
11773   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
11774   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
11775   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
11776   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
11777   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
11778   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
11779   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
11780   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
11781   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
11782   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
11783   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
11784   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
11785   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
11786   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
11787 </p></blockquote>
11788
11789 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11790
11791 <blockquote><p>
11792   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11793 </p></blockquote>
11794
11795 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11796
11797 <blockquote><p>
11798 [nothing]
11799 </p></blockquote>
11800
11801 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
11802
11803 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11804
11805 <blockquote><p>
11806   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
11807   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11808   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
11809   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
11810   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
11811   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
11812   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11813   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
11814   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
11815   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11816   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
11817   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
11818   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
11819   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
11820   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
11821   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
11822   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
11823   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
11824   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
11825   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
11826   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
11827   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
11828   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
11829   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
11830   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
11831   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
11832   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
11833   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
11834   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
11835   ttf-sazanami-gothic
11836 </p></blockquote>
11837
11838 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11839
11840 <blockquote><p>
11841   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
11842   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
11843   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
11844   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
11845   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
11846   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
11847   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
11848   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
11849   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
11850   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
11851   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
11852   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
11853   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
11854   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
11855   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11856   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11857   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
11858   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
11859   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11860   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
11861   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
11862   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
11863   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11864   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11865   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
11866   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
11867   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
11868   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
11869   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
11870   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
11871   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
11872   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
11873   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
11874 </p></blockquote>
11875
11876 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11877
11878 <blockquote><p>
11879   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
11880   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
11881   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
11882   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
11883   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
11884   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
11885   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
11886 </p></blockquote>
11887
11888 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11889
11890 <blockquote><p>
11891   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
11892 </p></blockquote>
11893
11894       </div>
11895       <div class="tags">
11896
11897
11898         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11899
11900
11901       </div>
11902     </div>
11903     <div class="padding"></div>
11904
11905     <div class="entry">
11906       <div class="title">
11907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
11908       </div>
11909       <div class="date">
11910         20th November 2010
11911       </div>
11912       <div class="body">
11913         <p>Answering
11914 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
11915 call from the Gnash project</a> for
11916 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
11917 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
11918 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
11919 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
11920 releases out more often.</p>
11921
11922 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
11923 I have considered setting up a <a
11924 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
11925 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
11926 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
11927 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
11928 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
11929 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
11930 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
11931 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
11932 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
11933 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
11934 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
11935 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
11936
11937       </div>
11938       <div class="tags">
11939
11940
11941         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11942
11943
11944       </div>
11945     </div>
11946     <div class="padding"></div>
11947
11948     <div class="entry">
11949       <div class="title">
11950         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
11951       </div>
11952       <div class="date">
11953          9th November 2010
11954       </div>
11955       <div class="body">
11956         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
11957
11958 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
11959 3D linked in from
11960 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
11961 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
11962
11963       </div>
11964       <div class="tags">
11965
11966
11967         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11968
11969
11970       </div>
11971     </div>
11972     <div class="padding"></div>
11973
11974     <div class="entry">
11975       <div class="title">
11976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
11977       </div>
11978       <div class="date">
11979         24th October 2010
11980       </div>
11981       <div class="body">
11982         <p>Some updates.</p>
11983
11984 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
11985 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
11986 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
11987 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
11988 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
11989 :)</p>
11990
11991 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
11992 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
11993 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
11994 It is called
11995 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
11996 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
11997 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
11998 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
11999 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
12000 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
12001
12002 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
12003 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
12004 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
12005 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
12006 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
12007 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
12008 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
12009 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
12010 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
12011 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
12012
12013       </div>
12014       <div class="tags">
12015
12016
12017         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
12018
12019
12020       </div>
12021     </div>
12022     <div class="padding"></div>
12023
12024     <div class="entry">
12025       <div class="title">
12026         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
12027       </div>
12028       <div class="date">
12029          4th September 2010
12030       </div>
12031       <div class="body">
12032         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
12033 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
12034 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
12035 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
12036 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
12037 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
12038 installed.</p>
12039
12040 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
12041 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
12042 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
12043 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
12044 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
12045 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
12046 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
12047 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
12048 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
12049
12050 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
12051 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
12052 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
12053 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
12054 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
12055 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
12056 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
12057 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
12058 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
12059 pages they want to visit.</p>
12060
12061 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
12062 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
12063 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
12064 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
12065 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
12066 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
12067 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
12068 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
12069 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
12070 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
12071 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
12072
12073       </div>
12074       <div class="tags">
12075
12076
12077         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12078
12079
12080       </div>
12081     </div>
12082     <div class="padding"></div>
12083
12084     <div class="entry">
12085       <div class="title">
12086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
12087       </div>
12088       <div class="date">
12089         27th July 2010
12090       </div>
12091       <div class="body">
12092         <p>I discovered this while doing
12093 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
12094 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
12095 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
12096 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
12097 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
12098
12099 <p>An example is from todays
12100 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
12101 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
12102 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
12103 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
12104 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
12105 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
12106 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
12107
12108 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
12109
12110 <blockquote><pre>
12111 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
12112  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
12113   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
12114 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
12115  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
12116 </pre></blockquote>
12117
12118 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
12119 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
12120 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
12121 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
12122 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
12123 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
12124 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
12125 of dependency loops.</p>
12126
12127 <p>Thanks to
12128 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
12129 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
12130 dependencies
12131 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
12132 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
12133
12134 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
12135 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
12136 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
12137 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
12138 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
12139 it.</p>
12140
12141       </div>
12142       <div class="tags">
12143
12144
12145         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12146
12147
12148       </div>
12149     </div>
12150     <div class="padding"></div>
12151
12152     <div class="entry">
12153       <div class="title">
12154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
12155       </div>
12156       <div class="date">
12157         17th July 2010
12158       </div>
12159       <div class="body">
12160         <p>This is a
12161 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
12162 on my
12163 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
12164 work</a> on
12165 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
12166 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
12167
12168 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
12169 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
12170 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
12171 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
12172
12173 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
12174 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
12175 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
12176
12177 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
12178
12179 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
12180 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
12181 the web.
12182
12183 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
12184 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
12185 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
12186 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
12187 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
12188 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
12189
12190 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
12191 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
12192 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
12193 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
12194 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
12195 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
12196 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
12197 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
12198 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
12199 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
12200 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
12201 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
12202 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
12203 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
12204 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
12205 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
12206
12207 <blockquote><pre>
12208 ldapsearch -h ldap \
12209   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
12210   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
12211   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
12212   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
12213   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
12214   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
12215
12216 ldapsearch -h ldap \
12217   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
12218   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
12219   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
12220   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
12221   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
12222 </pre></blockquote>
12223
12224 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
12225 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
12226 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
12227 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12228 also exist.</p>
12229
12230 <blockquote><pre>
12231 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12232 objectclass: top
12233 objectclass: dnsdomain
12234 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12235 dc: tjener
12236 arecord: 10.0.2.2
12237 associateddomain: tjener.intern
12238
12239 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12240 objectclass: top
12241 objectclass: dnsdomain2
12242 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12243 dc: 2
12244 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
12245 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
12246 </pre></blockquote>
12247
12248 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
12249 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
12250 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
12251 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
12252 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
12253 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
12254 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
12255 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
12256 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
12257 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
12258 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
12259 instead.</p>
12260
12261 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
12262 like this:</p>
12263
12264 <blockquote><pre>
12265 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
12266   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
12267   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
12268   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
12269   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
12270   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
12271
12272 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
12273   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
12274 </pre></blockquote>
12275
12276 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
12277 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
12278 reverse lookups.</p>
12279
12280 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
12281 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
12282 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
12283 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
12284
12285 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
12286 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
12287 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
12288
12289 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
12290 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
12291 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
12292 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
12293 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
12294
12295 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
12296 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
12297 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
12298 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
12299 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
12300
12301 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
12302 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
12303 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
12304 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
12305 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
12306 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
12307
12308 <blockquote><pre>
12309 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
12310     SUP top
12311     AUXILIARY
12312     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
12313           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
12314           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
12315           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
12316           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
12317     ))
12318 </pre></blockquote>
12319
12320 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
12321 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
12322 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
12323 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
12324 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
12325 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
12326
12327 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
12328
12329 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
12330 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
12331 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
12332 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
12333 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
12334
12335 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
12336 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
12337 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
12338 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
12339
12340 <blockquote><pre>
12341 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
12342 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
12343 </pre></blockquote>
12344
12345 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
12346 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
12347 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
12348 search result is this entry:</p>
12349
12350 <blockquote><pre>
12351 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12352 cn: dhcp
12353 objectClass: top
12354 objectClass: dhcpServer
12355 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12356 </pre></blockquote>
12357
12358 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
12359 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
12360 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
12361 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
12362 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
12363 The search result is this entry:</p>
12364
12365 <blockquote><pre>
12366 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12367 cn: DHCP Config
12368 objectClass: top
12369 objectClass: dhcpService
12370 objectClass: dhcpOptions
12371 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12372 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
12373 dhcpStatements: authoritative
12374 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
12375 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
12376 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
12377 </pre></blockquote>
12378
12379 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
12380 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
12381 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
12382 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
12383 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
12384 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
12385 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
12386 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
12387 related computer objects.</p>
12388
12389 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
12390 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
12391 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
12392 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
12393 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
12394 like:</p>
12395
12396 <blockquote><pre>
12397 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12398 cn: hostname
12399 objectClass: top
12400 objectClass: dhcpHost
12401 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12402 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
12403 </pre></blockquote>
12404
12405 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
12406 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
12407 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
12408 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
12409 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
12410 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
12411 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
12412 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
12413 structural object class.
12414
12415 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
12416
12417 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
12418 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
12419 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
12420 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
12421 in the configuration.</p>
12422
12423 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
12424 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
12425 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
12426 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
12427 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
12428 structure.</p>
12429
12430 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
12431 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
12432
12433 <blockquote><pre>
12434 ou=services
12435   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
12436     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
12437     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
12438       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
12439         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
12440     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
12441       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
12442         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
12443     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
12444       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
12445 </pre></blockquote>
12446
12447 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
12448 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
12449 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
12450 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
12451
12452 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
12453 like this:</p>
12454
12455 <blockquote><pre>
12456 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12457 dc: hostname
12458 objectClass: top
12459 objectClass: dhcpHost
12460 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12461 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
12462 associateddomain: hostname.intern
12463 arecord: 10.11.12.13
12464 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12465 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
12466 </pre></blockquote>
12467
12468 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
12469 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
12470 auxiliary object class.</p>
12471
12472       </div>
12473       <div class="tags">
12474
12475
12476         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12477
12478
12479       </div>
12480     </div>
12481     <div class="padding"></div>
12482
12483     <div class="entry">
12484       <div class="title">
12485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
12486       </div>
12487       <div class="date">
12488         14th July 2010
12489       </div>
12490       <div class="body">
12491         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
12492 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
12493 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
12494 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
12495 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
12496
12497 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
12498 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
12499
12500 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
12501 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
12502 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
12503 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
12504 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
12505 to a slave DNS server.</p>
12506
12507 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
12508 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
12509 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
12510 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
12511 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
12512 seem to work.</p>
12513
12514 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
12515 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
12516 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
12517 this:</p>
12518
12519 <blockquote><pre>
12520   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12521   cn: hostname
12522   objectClass: dhcphost
12523   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12524   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
12525   associateddomain: hostname.intern
12526   arecord: 10.11.12.13
12527   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12528   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
12529   ldapconfigsound: Y
12530 </pre></blockquote>
12531
12532 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
12533 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
12534 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
12535 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
12536
12537 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
12538 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
12539 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
12540 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
12541 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
12542 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
12543 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
12544 might be a good place to put it.</p>
12545
12546 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12547 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12548
12549       </div>
12550       <div class="tags">
12551
12552
12553         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12554
12555
12556       </div>
12557     </div>
12558     <div class="padding"></div>
12559
12560     <div class="entry">
12561       <div class="title">
12562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
12563       </div>
12564       <div class="date">
12565         11th July 2010
12566       </div>
12567       <div class="body">
12568         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
12569 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
12570 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
12571 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
12572
12573 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
12574 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
12575 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
12576 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
12577 LTSP clients.</p>
12578
12579 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
12580 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
12581 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
12582
12583 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
12584 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
12585 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
12586
12587 <blockquote><pre>
12588 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
12589 #
12590 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
12591 #
12592 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
12593 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
12594 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
12595 #
12596 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
12597 # existence of attribute names.
12598 #
12599 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
12600 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
12601 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
12602 #
12603 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
12604 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
12605 #
12606 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
12607 #     SUP top
12608 #     AUXILIARY
12609 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
12610
12611 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
12612 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
12613     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
12614     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
12615         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
12616         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
12617             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
12618             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
12619             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
12620             # bass value on to clients
12621             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
12622         done
12623     done
12624 fi
12625 </pre></blockquote>
12626
12627 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
12628 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
12629 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
12630 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
12631 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
12632
12633 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12634 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12635
12636 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
12637 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
12638 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
12639 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
12640 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
12641 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
12642
12643       </div>
12644       <div class="tags">
12645
12646
12647         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12648
12649
12650       </div>
12651     </div>
12652     <div class="padding"></div>
12653
12654     <div class="entry">
12655       <div class="title">
12656         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
12657       </div>
12658       <div class="date">
12659          9th July 2010
12660       </div>
12661       <div class="body">
12662         <p>Since
12663 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
12664 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
12665 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
12666 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
12667 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
12668 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
12669 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
12670 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
12671 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
12672 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
12673 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
12674 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
12675 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
12676
12677       </div>
12678       <div class="tags">
12679
12680
12681         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12682
12683
12684       </div>
12685     </div>
12686     <div class="padding"></div>
12687
12688     <div class="entry">
12689       <div class="title">
12690         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
12691       </div>
12692       <div class="date">
12693          3rd July 2010
12694       </div>
12695       <div class="body">
12696         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
12697 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
12698 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
12699 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
12700 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
12701 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
12702 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
12703 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
12704
12705 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
12706 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
12707 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
12708 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
12709 publish the difference.</p>
12710
12711 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12712
12713 <blockquote><p>
12714   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12715   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
12716   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
12717   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
12718   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
12719   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12720   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
12721   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
12722 </p></blockquote>
12723
12724 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12725
12726 <blockquote><p>
12727   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
12728   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
12729   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
12730   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
12731   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
12732   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
12733   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
12734   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
12735   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12736   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12737   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
12738   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
12739   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
12740   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
12741   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
12742   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
12743   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
12744   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
12745   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
12746   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
12747 </p></blockquote>
12748
12749 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12750
12751 <blockquote><p>
12752   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
12753   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
12754   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12755   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12756   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
12757   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
12758   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
12759   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12760   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12761   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12762   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12763   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
12764   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
12765   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
12766   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
12767   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
12768   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
12769   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
12770   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
12771   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
12772   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
12773 </p></blockquote>
12774
12775 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12776
12777 <blockquote><p>
12778   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
12779   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
12780   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
12781 </p></blockquote>
12782
12783 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
12784 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
12785 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
12786 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
12787 the difference somewhat.
12788
12789       </div>
12790       <div class="tags">
12791
12792
12793         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12794
12795
12796       </div>
12797     </div>
12798     <div class="padding"></div>
12799
12800     <div class="entry">
12801       <div class="title">
12802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
12803       </div>
12804       <div class="date">
12805         28th June 2010
12806       </div>
12807       <div class="body">
12808         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
12809 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
12810 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
12811 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
12812 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
12813 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
12814 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
12815 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
12816 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
12817 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
12818
12819 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
12820 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
12821 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
12822 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
12823 released.</p>
12824
12825 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
12826 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
12827 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
12828 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
12829
12830 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
12831 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12832
12833 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
12834 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
12835 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
12836 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
12837 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
12838
12839       </div>
12840       <div class="tags">
12841
12842
12843         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12844
12845
12846       </div>
12847     </div>
12848     <div class="padding"></div>
12849
12850     <div class="entry">
12851       <div class="title">
12852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
12853       </div>
12854       <div class="date">
12855         24th June 2010
12856       </div>
12857       <div class="body">
12858         <p>A while back, I
12859 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
12860 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
12861 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
12862 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
12863
12864 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
12865 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
12866 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
12867 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
12868
12869 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
12870 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
12871 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
12872 Debian Edu.</p>
12873
12874 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
12875 the
12876 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
12877 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
12878 available today from IETF.</p>
12879
12880 <pre>
12881 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
12882 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
12883 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
12884  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
12885         NAME 'dhcpHost'
12886         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
12887 -       SUP top
12888 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
12889         MUST cn
12890         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
12891         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
12892 </pre>
12893
12894 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
12895 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
12896 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
12897
12898 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12899 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12900
12901       </div>
12902       <div class="tags">
12903
12904
12905         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12906
12907
12908       </div>
12909     </div>
12910     <div class="padding"></div>
12911
12912     <div class="entry">
12913       <div class="title">
12914         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
12915       </div>
12916       <div class="date">
12917         16th June 2010
12918       </div>
12919       <div class="body">
12920         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
12921 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
12922 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
12923 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
12924 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
12925 this:
12926
12927 <blockquote><pre>
12928 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12929 tasksel --new-install
12930 </pre></blockquote>
12931
12932 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
12933 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
12934 any output what so ever.
12935
12936 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
12937 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
12938 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
12939 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
12940 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
12941 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
12942 code like this:
12943
12944 <blockquote><pre>
12945 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12946 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
12947 $cmd
12948 </pre></blockquote>
12949
12950 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
12951 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
12952 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
12953 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
12954 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
12955 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
12956 installation.</p>
12957
12958 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
12959 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
12960 like this.</p>
12961
12962       </div>
12963       <div class="tags">
12964
12965
12966         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12967
12968
12969       </div>
12970     </div>
12971     <div class="padding"></div>
12972
12973     <div class="entry">
12974       <div class="title">
12975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
12976       </div>
12977       <div class="date">
12978         13th June 2010
12979       </div>
12980       <div class="body">
12981         <p>My
12982 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
12983 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
12984 finally made the upgrade logs available from
12985 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
12986 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
12987 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
12988 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
12989
12990 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
12991 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
12992 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
12993 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
12994 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
12995 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
12996 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
12997 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
12998
12999 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
13000 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
13001 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
13002 too surprising.</p>
13003
13004 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
13005 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
13006 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
13007 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
13008 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
13009 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
13010 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
13011 continue.</p>
13012
13013 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
13014 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
13015   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
13016   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
13017   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
13018   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
13019   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
13020   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13021   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13022   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
13023   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
13024   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
13025   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
13026   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13027   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13028   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13029   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13030   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13031   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
13032   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
13033   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
13034   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
13035   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
13036   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
13037   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
13038   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
13039   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
13040   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
13041   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
13042   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
13043
13044 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
13045
13046 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
13047   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
13048   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
13049   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
13050   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
13051   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
13052   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
13053   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
13054   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
13055   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
13056   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
13057   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
13058   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
13059   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
13060   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
13061   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
13062   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
13063   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
13064   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
13065   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
13066   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
13067   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
13068   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
13069   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
13070   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
13071   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
13072   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
13073   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
13074   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
13075   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13076   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13077   zip</p>
13078
13079 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
13080
13081 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
13082   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
13083   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
13084   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
13085   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
13086   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
13087   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13088   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13089   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
13090   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
13091   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
13092   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
13093   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13094   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13095   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13096   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13097   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13098   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
13099   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
13100   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
13101   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
13102   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
13103   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
13104   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
13105   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
13106   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
13107   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
13108   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
13109
13110 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
13111 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
13112   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
13113   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
13114   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
13115   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
13116   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
13117   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
13118   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
13119   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
13120   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
13121   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
13122   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
13123   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
13124   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
13125   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
13126   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
13127   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
13128   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
13129   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
13130   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
13131   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
13132   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
13133   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
13134   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
13135   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
13136   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
13137   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
13138   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
13139   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
13140   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
13141   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
13142   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
13143   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
13144   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
13145   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13146   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13147   xulrunner-1.9</p>
13148
13149
13150       </div>
13151       <div class="tags">
13152
13153
13154         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13155
13156
13157       </div>
13158     </div>
13159     <div class="padding"></div>
13160
13161     <div class="entry">
13162       <div class="title">
13163         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
13164       </div>
13165       <div class="date">
13166         11th June 2010
13167       </div>
13168       <div class="body">
13169         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
13170 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
13171 have been discovered and reported in the process
13172 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
13173 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
13174 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
13175 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
13176 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
13177
13178 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
13179 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
13180 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
13181 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
13182 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
13183 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
13184
13185 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
13186 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
13187 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13188 is created.  The bug report
13189 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
13190 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
13191 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
13192 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
13193 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
13194 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
13195 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
13196 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
13197 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
13198 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
13199 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
13200 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
13201 Debian Squeeze.</p>
13202
13203 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
13204 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
13205 trick:</p>
13206
13207 <blockquote><pre>
13208 #!/bin/sh
13209 set -ex
13210
13211 if [ "$1" ] ; then
13212     desktop=$1
13213 else
13214     desktop=gnome
13215 fi
13216
13217 from=lenny
13218 to=squeeze
13219
13220 exec &lt; /dev/null
13221 unset LANG
13222 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
13223 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
13224 fuser -mv .
13225 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
13226 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13227 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
13228 #!/bin/sh
13229 exit 101
13230 EOF
13231 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
13232 exit_cleanup() {
13233     umount $tmpdir/proc
13234 }
13235 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
13236 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
13237 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
13238
13239 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
13240
13241 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
13242 # to return the correct answers.
13243 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
13244     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
13245
13246 # Include the desktop and laptop task
13247 for test in desktop laptop ; do
13248     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
13249 #!/bin/sh
13250 exit 2
13251 EOF
13252     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
13253 done
13254
13255 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
13256 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
13257 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
13258 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
13259
13260 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
13261 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13262 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13263 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
13264 fuser -mv
13265 </pre></blockquote>
13266
13267 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
13268 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
13269 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
13270 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
13271 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
13272 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
13273
13274 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
13275 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
13276 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
13277 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
13278 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
13279 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
13280 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
13281
13282 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
13283 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
13284 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
13285 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
13286 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
13287 packages.</p>
13288
13289       </div>
13290       <div class="tags">
13291
13292
13293         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13294
13295
13296       </div>
13297     </div>
13298     <div class="padding"></div>
13299
13300     <div class="entry">
13301       <div class="title">
13302         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
13303       </div>
13304       <div class="date">
13305          6th June 2010
13306       </div>
13307       <div class="body">
13308         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
13309 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
13310 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
13311 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
13312 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
13313 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
13314 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
13315
13316 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
13317 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
13318 COLUMNS):</p>
13319
13320 <blockquote><pre>
13321 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
13322 previous=N
13323 PREVLEVEL=
13324 RUNLEVEL=
13325 runlevel=S
13326 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
13327 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
13328 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
13329 </pre></blockquote>
13330
13331 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
13332 script.</p>
13333
13334 <blockquote><pre>
13335 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
13336 previous=N
13337 PREVLEVEL=N
13338 RUNLEVEL=S
13339 runlevel=S
13340 </pre></blockquote>
13341
13342 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
13343 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
13344 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
13345
13346 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
13347 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
13348 choice.</p>
13349
13350       </div>
13351       <div class="tags">
13352
13353
13354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13355
13356
13357       </div>
13358     </div>
13359     <div class="padding"></div>
13360
13361     <div class="entry">
13362       <div class="title">
13363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
13364       </div>
13365       <div class="date">
13366          6th June 2010
13367       </div>
13368       <div class="body">
13369         <p>Via the
13370 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
13371 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
13372 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
13373 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
13374 following the standards wars of today.</p>
13375
13376       </div>
13377       <div class="tags">
13378
13379
13380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13381
13382
13383       </div>
13384     </div>
13385     <div class="padding"></div>
13386
13387     <div class="entry">
13388       <div class="title">
13389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
13390       </div>
13391       <div class="date">
13392          3rd June 2010
13393       </div>
13394       <div class="body">
13395         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
13396 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
13397 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
13398 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
13399 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
13400
13401 <blockquote><pre>
13402 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
13403   vendor                    count
13404   Dell Computer Corporation     1
13405     PowerEdge 1750              1
13406   IBM                           1
13407     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
13408   Intel                         2
13409   [no-dmi-info]                 3
13410 maintainer:~#
13411 </pre></blockquote>
13412
13413 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
13414 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
13415 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
13416 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
13417 option to list the individual machines.</p>
13418
13419 <p>A larger list is
13420 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
13421 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
13422 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
13423 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
13424 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
13425 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
13426 collector.</p>
13427
13428       </div>
13429       <div class="tags">
13430
13431
13432         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
13433
13434
13435       </div>
13436     </div>
13437     <div class="padding"></div>
13438
13439     <div class="entry">
13440       <div class="title">
13441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
13442       </div>
13443       <div class="date">
13444          1st June 2010
13445       </div>
13446       <div class="body">
13447         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
13448 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
13449 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
13450 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
13451 wait.</p>
13452
13453 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
13454 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
13455 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
13456 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
13457 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
13458 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
13459
13460 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
13461 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
13462 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
13463 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
13464 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
13465 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
13466 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
13467 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
13468
13469 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
13470
13471       </div>
13472       <div class="tags">
13473
13474
13475         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13476
13477
13478       </div>
13479     </div>
13480     <div class="padding"></div>
13481
13482     <div class="entry">
13483       <div class="title">
13484         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
13485       </div>
13486       <div class="date">
13487         27th May 2010
13488       </div>
13489       <div class="body">
13490         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
13491 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
13492 issues are known and should be solved:
13493
13494 <p><ul>
13495
13496 <li>The wicd package seen to
13497 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
13498 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
13499 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
13500 seem to be on the case.</li>
13501
13502 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
13503 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
13504 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
13505 maintainer is on the case.</li>
13506
13507 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
13508 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
13509 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
13510 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
13511 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
13512 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
13513 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
13514 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
13515
13516 </ul></p>
13517
13518 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
13519 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
13520 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
13521 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
13522
13523 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13524 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13525 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13526 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13527
13528 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
13529
13530       </div>
13531       <div class="tags">
13532
13533
13534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13535
13536
13537       </div>
13538     </div>
13539     <div class="padding"></div>
13540
13541     <div class="entry">
13542       <div class="title">
13543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
13544       </div>
13545       <div class="date">
13546         22nd May 2010
13547       </div>
13548       <div class="body">
13549         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
13550 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
13551 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
13552 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
13553
13554 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
13555 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
13556 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
13557 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
13558 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
13559 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
13560 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
13561 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
13562 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
13563 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
13564 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
13565 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
13566 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
13567 going to work.</p>
13568
13569 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
13570 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
13571 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
13572 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
13573 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
13574 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
13575 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
13576 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
13577 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
13578 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
13579 Edu.</p>
13580
13581 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
13582 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
13583 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
13584 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
13585 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
13586 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
13587
13588 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
13589 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
13590
13591       </div>
13592       <div class="tags">
13593
13594
13595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13596
13597
13598       </div>
13599     </div>
13600     <div class="padding"></div>
13601
13602     <div class="entry">
13603       <div class="title">
13604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
13605       </div>
13606       <div class="date">
13607         14th May 2010
13608       </div>
13609       <div class="body">
13610         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
13611 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
13612 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
13613 expected, if I am to believe the
13614 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
13615 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
13616 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
13617 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
13618 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
13619 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
13620 version.</p>
13621
13622 More information about
13623 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13624 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
13625 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
13626 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
13627
13628 <blockquote><pre>
13629 CONCURRENCY=none
13630 </pre></blockquote>
13631
13632 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13633 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13634 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13635 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13636
13637       </div>
13638       <div class="tags">
13639
13640
13641         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13642
13643
13644       </div>
13645     </div>
13646     <div class="padding"></div>
13647
13648     <div class="entry">
13649       <div class="title">
13650         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
13651       </div>
13652       <div class="date">
13653         14th May 2010
13654       </div>
13655       <div class="body">
13656         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
13657 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
13658 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
13659 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
13660 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
13661 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
13662 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
13663 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
13664
13665 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
13666 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
13667 this on the collector host:</p>
13668
13669 <blockquote><pre>
13670 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
13671 </pre></blockquote>
13672
13673 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
13674 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
13675
13676 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
13677 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
13678 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
13679 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
13680 written yet.</p>
13681
13682       </div>
13683       <div class="tags">
13684
13685
13686         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
13687
13688
13689       </div>
13690     </div>
13691     <div class="padding"></div>
13692
13693     <div class="entry">
13694       <div class="title">
13695         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
13696       </div>
13697       <div class="date">
13698         13th May 2010
13699       </div>
13700       <div class="body">
13701         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
13702 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
13703 has been
13704 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
13705
13706 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
13707 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
13708 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
13709 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
13710 based boot system.  Tollef is
13711 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
13712 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
13713 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
13714 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
13715 at the moment do not.</p>
13716
13717 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
13718 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
13719 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
13720 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
13721 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
13722 way forward.</p>
13723
13724 <p>In the mean time, based on the
13725 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
13726 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
13727 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
13728 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
13729 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
13730 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
13731 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
13732 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
13733
13734       </div>
13735       <div class="tags">
13736
13737
13738         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13739
13740
13741       </div>
13742     </div>
13743     <div class="padding"></div>
13744
13745     <div class="entry">
13746       <div class="title">
13747         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
13748       </div>
13749       <div class="date">
13750          6th May 2010
13751       </div>
13752       <div class="body">
13753         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
13754 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
13755 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
13756 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
13757 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13758 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
13759 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
13760
13761 <blockquote><pre>
13762 CONCURRENCY=makefile
13763 </pre></blockquote>
13764
13765 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
13766 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
13767 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
13768 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
13769 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
13770 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
13771 make this happen.</p>
13772
13773 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
13774 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
13775 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
13776 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
13777 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
13778
13779 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
13780 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
13781 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
13782 fix the remaining issues.</p>
13783
13784 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13785 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13786 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13787 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13788
13789       </div>
13790       <div class="tags">
13791
13792
13793         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13794
13795
13796       </div>
13797     </div>
13798     <div class="padding"></div>
13799
13800     <div class="entry">
13801       <div class="title">
13802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
13803       </div>
13804       <div class="date">
13805         27th July 2009
13806       </div>
13807       <div class="body">
13808         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
13809 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
13810 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
13811 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
13812 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
13813 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
13814 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
13815
13816 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
13817 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
13818 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
13819
13820       </div>
13821       <div class="tags">
13822
13823
13824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13825
13826
13827       </div>
13828     </div>
13829     <div class="padding"></div>
13830
13831     <div class="entry">
13832       <div class="title">
13833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
13834       </div>
13835       <div class="date">
13836         22nd July 2009
13837       </div>
13838       <div class="body">
13839         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
13840 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
13841 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
13842 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
13843 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
13844 the package up to date.</p>
13845
13846 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
13847 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
13848 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
13849 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
13850 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
13851 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
13852 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
13853 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
13854 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
13855 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
13856 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
13857 working on the future release.</p>
13858
13859 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
13860 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
13861
13862       </div>
13863       <div class="tags">
13864
13865
13866         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13867
13868
13869       </div>
13870     </div>
13871     <div class="padding"></div>
13872
13873     <div class="entry">
13874       <div class="title">
13875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
13876       </div>
13877       <div class="date">
13878         24th June 2009
13879       </div>
13880       <div class="body">
13881         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
13882 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
13883 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
13884 funded
13885 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
13886 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
13887 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
13888 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
13889 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
13890 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
13891
13892 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
13893 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
13894 boot:</p>
13895
13896 <ul>
13897
13898 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
13899
13900 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
13901    clock is in UTC.</li>
13902
13903 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
13904    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13905    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
13906
13907 </ul>
13908
13909 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
13910 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
13911 Villegas</a>.
13912
13913 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
13914 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
13915 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
13916 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
13917 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
13918 using this.</p>
13919
13920 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
13921 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
13922 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
13923 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
13924 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
13925 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
13926 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
13927
13928       </div>
13929       <div class="tags">
13930
13931
13932         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13933
13934
13935       </div>
13936     </div>
13937     <div class="padding"></div>
13938
13939     <div class="entry">
13940       <div class="title">
13941         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
13942       </div>
13943       <div class="date">
13944         17th May 2009
13945       </div>
13946       <div class="body">
13947         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
13948 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
13949 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
13950 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
13951 dager siden kom
13952 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
13953 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
13954 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
13955 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
13956 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
13957
13958 <blockquote>
13959 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
13960 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
13961 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
13962 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
13963 </blockquote>
13964
13965 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
13966 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
13967 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
13968 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
13969 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
13970
13971 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
13972 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
13973 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
13974
13975       </div>
13976       <div class="tags">
13977
13978
13979         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
13980
13981
13982       </div>
13983     </div>
13984     <div class="padding"></div>
13985
13986     <div class="entry">
13987       <div class="title">
13988         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
13989       </div>
13990       <div class="date">
13991          7th May 2009
13992       </div>
13993       <div class="body">
13994         <p>Kom over
13995 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
13996 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
13997 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
13998 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
13999 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
14000 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
14001 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
14002
14003       </div>
14004       <div class="tags">
14005
14006
14007         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14008
14009
14010       </div>
14011     </div>
14012     <div class="padding"></div>
14013
14014     <div class="entry">
14015       <div class="title">
14016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
14017       </div>
14018       <div class="date">
14019          2nd May 2009
14020       </div>
14021       <div class="body">
14022         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
14023 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
14024 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
14025 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
14026 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
14027 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
14028 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
14029 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
14030 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
14031 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
14032 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
14033 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
14034 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
14035 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
14036 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
14037 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
14038 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
14039 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
14040 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
14041 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
14042
14043 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
14044 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
14045 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
14046 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
14047 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
14048 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
14049 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
14050 betydelige.</p>
14051
14052       </div>
14053       <div class="tags">
14054
14055
14056         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
14057
14058
14059       </div>
14060     </div>
14061     <div class="padding"></div>
14062
14063     <div class="entry">
14064       <div class="title">
14065         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
14066       </div>
14067       <div class="date">
14068          2nd May 2009
14069       </div>
14070       <div class="body">
14071         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
14072 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
14073 do not yet know them.</p>
14074
14075 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
14076 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
14077 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
14078 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
14079 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
14080 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
14081 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
14082 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
14083 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
14084 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
14085 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
14086
14087 <p>The second one is
14088 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
14089 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
14090 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
14091 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
14092 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
14093 and the company behind it is running
14094 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
14095 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
14096 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
14097 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
14098 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
14099 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
14100 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
14101 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
14102
14103 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
14104 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
14105 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
14106 surrounded by today.</p>
14107
14108       </div>
14109       <div class="tags">
14110
14111
14112         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14113
14114
14115       </div>
14116     </div>
14117     <div class="padding"></div>
14118
14119     <div class="entry">
14120       <div class="title">
14121         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
14122       </div>
14123       <div class="date">
14124         28th April 2009
14125       </div>
14126       <div class="body">
14127         <p>Julien Blache
14128 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
14129 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
14130 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
14131 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
14132 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
14133 properties.</p>
14134
14135       </div>
14136       <div class="tags">
14137
14138
14139         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14140
14141
14142       </div>
14143     </div>
14144     <div class="padding"></div>
14145
14146     <div class="entry">
14147       <div class="title">
14148         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
14149       </div>
14150       <div class="date">
14151         30th March 2009
14152       </div>
14153       <div class="body">
14154         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
14155 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
14156 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
14157 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
14158 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
14159 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
14160 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
14161 application.</p>
14162
14163 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
14164 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
14165 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
14166 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
14167 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
14168 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
14169 blocked from doing so.</p>
14170
14171 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
14172 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
14173 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
14174 requirements change.</p>
14175
14176 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
14177 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
14178 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
14179
14180       </div>
14181       <div class="tags">
14182
14183
14184         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
14185
14186
14187       </div>
14188     </div>
14189     <div class="padding"></div>
14190
14191     <div class="entry">
14192       <div class="title">
14193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
14194       </div>
14195       <div class="date">
14196         29th March 2009
14197       </div>
14198       <div class="body">
14199         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
14200 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
14201 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
14202 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
14203 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
14204 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
14205 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
14206 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
14207 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
14208 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
14209 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
14210 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
14211 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
14212 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
14213 now. :)</p>
14214
14215       </div>
14216       <div class="tags">
14217
14218
14219         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14220
14221
14222       </div>
14223     </div>
14224     <div class="padding"></div>
14225
14226     <div class="entry">
14227       <div class="title">
14228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
14229       </div>
14230       <div class="date">
14231         29th March 2009
14232       </div>
14233       <div class="body">
14234         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
14235 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
14236 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
14237 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
14238 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
14239 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
14240
14241 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
14242 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
14243 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
14244 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
14245 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
14246 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
14247 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
14248 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
14249 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
14250 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
14251 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
14252 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
14253 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
14254
14255 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
14256 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
14257 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
14258 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
14259
14260 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
14261 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
14262
14263 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
14264 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
14265 new IETF work group?</p>
14266
14267       </div>
14268       <div class="tags">
14269
14270
14271         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14272
14273
14274       </div>
14275     </div>
14276     <div class="padding"></div>
14277
14278     <div class="entry">
14279       <div class="title">
14280         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
14281       </div>
14282       <div class="date">
14283         15th February 2009
14284       </div>
14285       <div class="body">
14286         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
14287 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
14288 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
14289 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
14290 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
14291 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
14292 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
14293 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
14294 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
14295 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
14296 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
14297 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
14298
14299       </div>
14300       <div class="tags">
14301
14302
14303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
14304
14305
14306       </div>
14307     </div>
14308     <div class="padding"></div>
14309
14310     <div class="entry">
14311       <div class="title">
14312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
14313       </div>
14314       <div class="date">
14315          7th December 2008
14316       </div>
14317       <div class="body">
14318         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
14319 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
14320 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
14321 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
14322 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
14323 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
14324 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
14325 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
14326
14327 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
14328 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
14329 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
14330 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
14331 of these cards.</p>
14332
14333       </div>
14334       <div class="tags">
14335
14336
14337         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
14338
14339
14340       </div>
14341     </div>
14342     <div class="padding"></div>
14343
14344     <div class="entry">
14345       <div class="title">
14346         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
14347       </div>
14348       <div class="date">
14349         25th November 2008
14350       </div>
14351       <div class="body">
14352         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
14353 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
14354 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
14355 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
14356 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
14357 notes are available on
14358 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
14359 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
14360 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
14361 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
14362 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
14363 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
14364 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
14365 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
14366 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
14367
14368 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
14369 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
14370
14371       </div>
14372       <div class="tags">
14373
14374
14375         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14376
14377
14378       </div>
14379     </div>
14380     <div class="padding"></div>
14381
14382     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
14383     <div id="sidebar">
14384
14385
14386
14387 <h2>Archive</h2>
14388 <ul>
14389
14390 <li>2021
14391 <ul>
14392
14393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/01/">January (2)</a></li>
14394
14395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/02/">February (1)</a></li>
14396
14397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/05/">May (1)</a></li>
14398
14399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/06/">June (1)</a></li>
14400
14401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/07/">July (3)</a></li>
14402
14403 </ul></li>
14404
14405 <li>2020
14406 <ul>
14407
14408 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/02/">February (2)</a></li>
14409
14410 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/03/">March (2)</a></li>
14411
14412 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/04/">April (2)</a></li>
14413
14414 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/05/">May (3)</a></li>
14415
14416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14417
14418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/07/">July (1)</a></li>
14419
14420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/09/">September (1)</a></li>
14421
14422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/10/">October (1)</a></li>
14423
14424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/11/">November (1)</a></li>
14425
14426 </ul></li>
14427
14428 <li>2019
14429 <ul>
14430
14431 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/01/">January (4)</a></li>
14432
14433 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/02/">February (3)</a></li>
14434
14435 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/03/">March (3)</a></li>
14436
14437 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/05/">May (2)</a></li>
14438
14439 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/06/">June (5)</a></li>
14440
14441 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/07/">July (2)</a></li>
14442
14443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/08/">August (1)</a></li>
14444
14445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/09/">September (1)</a></li>
14446
14447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/11/">November (1)</a></li>
14448
14449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/12/">December (4)</a></li>
14450
14451 </ul></li>
14452
14453 <li>2018
14454 <ul>
14455
14456 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/01/">January (1)</a></li>
14457
14458 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/02/">February (5)</a></li>
14459
14460 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/03/">March (5)</a></li>
14461
14462 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/04/">April (3)</a></li>
14463
14464 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14465
14466 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/07/">July (5)</a></li>
14467
14468 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/08/">August (3)</a></li>
14469
14470 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/09/">September (3)</a></li>
14471
14472 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/10/">October (5)</a></li>
14473
14474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/11/">November (2)</a></li>
14475
14476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/12/">December (4)</a></li>
14477
14478 </ul></li>
14479
14480 <li>2017
14481 <ul>
14482
14483 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
14484
14485 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
14486
14487 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
14488
14489 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
14490
14491 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
14492
14493 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
14494
14495 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
14496
14497 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
14498
14499 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
14500
14501 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14502
14503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/12/">December (4)</a></li>
14504
14505 </ul></li>
14506
14507 <li>2016
14508 <ul>
14509
14510 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
14511
14512 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
14513
14514 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
14515
14516 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
14517
14518 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
14519
14520 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14521
14522 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
14523
14524 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
14525
14526 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
14527
14528 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
14529
14530 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
14531
14532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
14533
14534 </ul></li>
14535
14536 <li>2015
14537 <ul>
14538
14539 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
14540
14541 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
14542
14543 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
14544
14545 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
14546
14547 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
14548
14549 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
14550
14551 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
14552
14553 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
14554
14555 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
14556
14557 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
14558
14559 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
14560
14561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14562
14563 </ul></li>
14564
14565 <li>2014
14566 <ul>
14567
14568 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
14569
14570 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
14571
14572 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
14573
14574 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
14575
14576 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
14577
14578 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14579
14580 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
14581
14582 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
14583
14584 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
14585
14586 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
14587
14588 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14589
14590 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
14591
14592 </ul></li>
14593
14594 <li>2013
14595 <ul>
14596
14597 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
14598
14599 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
14600
14601 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
14602
14603 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
14604
14605 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14606
14607 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
14608
14609 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
14610
14611 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
14612
14613 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
14614
14615 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
14616
14617 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
14618
14619 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14620
14621 </ul></li>
14622
14623 <li>2012
14624 <ul>
14625
14626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
14627
14628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
14629
14630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
14631
14632 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
14633
14634 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
14635
14636 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
14637
14638 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
14639
14640 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14641
14642 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
14643
14644 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
14645
14646 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
14647
14648 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
14649
14650 </ul></li>
14651
14652 <li>2011
14653 <ul>
14654
14655 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
14656
14657 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
14658
14659 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
14660
14661 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
14662
14663 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
14664
14665 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14666
14667 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
14668
14669 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14670
14671 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
14672
14673 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14674
14675 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14676
14677 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
14678
14679 </ul></li>
14680
14681 <li>2010
14682 <ul>
14683
14684 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
14685
14686 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
14687
14688 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
14689
14690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
14691
14692 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14693
14694 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
14695
14696 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
14697
14698 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
14699
14700 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
14701
14702 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
14703
14704 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
14705
14706 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
14707
14708 </ul></li>
14709
14710 <li>2009
14711 <ul>
14712
14713 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
14714
14715 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
14716
14717 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
14718
14719 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
14720
14721 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14722
14723 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
14724
14725 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
14726
14727 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
14728
14729 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
14730
14731 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14732
14733 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14734
14735 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14736
14737 </ul></li>
14738
14739 <li>2008
14740 <ul>
14741
14742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
14743
14744 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
14745
14746 </ul></li>
14747
14748 </ul>
14749
14750
14751
14752 <h2>Tags</h2>
14753 <ul>
14754
14755  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (16)</a></li>
14756
14757  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
14758
14759  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
14760
14761  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
14762
14763  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/betalkontant">betalkontant (9)</a></li>
14764
14765  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (12)</a></li>
14766
14767  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (17)</a></li>
14768
14769  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
14770
14771  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
14772
14773  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (176)</a></li>
14774
14775  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (159)</a></li>
14776
14777  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (8)</a></li>
14778
14779  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (11)</a></li>
14780
14781  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (17)</a></li>
14782
14783  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (28)</a></li>
14784
14785  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
14786
14787  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (426)</a></li>
14788
14789  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
14790
14791  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (14)</a></li>
14792
14793  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (34)</a></li>
14794
14795  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
14796
14797  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (20)</a></li>
14798
14799  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
14800
14801  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (43)</a></li>
14802
14803  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (16)</a></li>
14804
14805  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (23)</a></li>
14806
14807  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi (4)</a></li>
14808
14809  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
14810
14811  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (4)</a></li>
14812
14813  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
14814
14815  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
14816
14817  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
14818
14819  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
14820
14821  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (42)</a></li>
14822
14823  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (13)</a></li>
14824
14825  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5 (23)</a></li>
14826
14827  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (318)</a></li>
14828
14829  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (198)</a></li>
14830
14831  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (40)</a></li>
14832
14833  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
14834
14835  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (75)</a></li>
14836
14837  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (112)</a></li>
14838
14839  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (2)</a></li>
14840
14841  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
14842
14843  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
14844
14845  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
14846
14847  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (12)</a></li>
14848
14849  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
14850
14851  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (7)</a></li>
14852
14853  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
14854
14855  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (59)</a></li>
14856
14857  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
14858
14859  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
14860
14861  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (71)</a></li>
14862
14863  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (7)</a></li>
14864
14865  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (13)</a></li>
14866
14867  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (61)</a></li>
14868
14869  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (5)</a></li>
14870
14871  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
14872
14873  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
14874
14875  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri (19)</a></li>
14876
14877  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (75)</a></li>
14878
14879  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
14880
14881  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (42)</a></li>
14882
14883 </ul>
14884
14885
14886     </div>
14887     <p style="text-align: right">
14888  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
14889 </p>
14890
14891   </body>
14892 </html>