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1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/' xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
3 <channel>
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
5 <description></description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
7 <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
8
9 <item>
10 <title>Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</guid>
13 <pubDate>Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
14 <description>&lt;p&gt;Making packages for Debian require quite a lot of attention to
15 details. And one of the details is the content of the
16 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
17 the code in the package in question, preferably in
18 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/&quot;&gt;machine
19 readable DEP5 format&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
20
21 &lt;p&gt;For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
22 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
23 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters. So getting it right
24 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
25 both you and the ftpmasters some work.. Today, while trying to figure
26 out what was wrong with
27 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447&quot;&gt;the
28 zfsonlinux copyright file&lt;/a&gt;, I decided to spend some time on
29 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
30 semi-automatically.&lt;/p&gt;
31
32 &lt;p&gt;Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
33 file based on the code in the source package,
34 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake&quot;&gt;debmake&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;
35 and &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme&quot;&gt;cme&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;. I&#39;m
36 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
37 create a sensible draft file. As far as I can tell, none of them can
38 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
39 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload. I found the debmake
40 option in
41 &lt;a href=&quot;http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html&quot;&gt;a
42 blog posts from 2014&lt;/a&gt;.
43
44 &lt;p&gt;To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
45
46 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
47 debmake -cc &gt; debian/copyright
48 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
49
50 &lt;p&gt;Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
51 this might not be the best option.&lt;/p&gt;
52
53 &lt;p&gt;The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
54 this approach in
55 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/&quot;&gt;a
56 blog post from 2015&lt;/a&gt;. To generate using cme, use the &#39;update
57 dpkg-copyright&#39; option:
58
59 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
60 cme update dpkg-copyright -quiet
61 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
62
63 &lt;p&gt;This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to
64 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.&lt;/p&gt;
65
66 &lt;p&gt;When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
67 check if the file is correct. For this I found two good options,
68 &lt;tt&gt;debmake -k&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;license-reconcile&lt;/tt&gt;. The former seem
69 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
70 ineffective blocks in the copyright file. The latter reports missing
71 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
72 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0). I suspect it is good to use both and
73 fix all issues reported by them before uploading. But I do not know
74 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
75 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.&lt;/p&gt;
76
77 &lt;p&gt;The devscripts tool &lt;tt&gt;licensecheck&lt;/tt&gt; deserve mentioning. It
78 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
79 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
80 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.&lt;/p&gt;
81
82 &lt;p&gt;Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
83 debian/copyright file. Please let me know, or blog about it on
84 planet.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
85
86 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
87 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
88 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
89 </description>
90 </item>
91
92 <item>
93 <title>Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</title>
94 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</link>
95 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</guid>
96 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Feb 2016 16:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
97 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;appstream system&lt;/a&gt;
98 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
99 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
100 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it. This can
101 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
102 about. :)&lt;/p&gt;
103
104 &lt;p&gt;Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
105 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
106 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
107 unstable. In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
108 by the kernel during kernel module loading. To find the package
109 providing the example file, do like this:&lt;/p&gt;
110
111 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
112 % apt install appstream
113 [...]
114 % apt update
115 [...]
116 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
117 awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
118 firmware-qlogic
119 %
120 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
121
122 &lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines&quot;&gt;the
123 appstream wiki&lt;/a&gt; page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
124 a way appstream can use.&lt;/p&gt;
125
126 &lt;p&gt;This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
127 given MIME type. This is very useful when you get a file you do not
128 know how to handle. First find the mime type using &lt;tt&gt;file
129 --mime-type&lt;/tt&gt;, and next look up the package providing support for
130 it. Lets say you got an SVG file. Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
131 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:&lt;/p&gt;
132
133 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
134 % apt install appstream
135 [...]
136 % apt update
137 [...]
138 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
139 awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
140 bkchem
141 phototonic
142 inkscape
143 shutter
144 tetzle
145 geeqie
146 xia
147 pinta
148 gthumb
149 karbon
150 comix
151 mirage
152 viewnior
153 postr
154 ristretto
155 kolourpaint4
156 eog
157 eom
158 gimagereader
159 midori
160 %
161 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
162
163 &lt;p&gt;I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
164 packages providing appstream metadata.&lt;/p&gt;
165 </description>
166 </item>
167
168 <item>
169 <title>Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</title>
170 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html</link>
171 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html</guid>
172 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jan 2016 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
173 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
174 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
175 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
176 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent). And if their
177 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
178 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
179 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
180 during installation). And when these programs send out information to
181 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
182 extra care is taken to not send the location. The provided
183 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
184 good and bad, depend on your point of view). What is certain, is that
185 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
186 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
187 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
188 entities.&lt;/p&gt;
189
190 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
191
192 &lt;p&gt;The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
193 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing. It is
194 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
195 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
196 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information. But the
197 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
198 tool to do so is called
199 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geocreepy.com/&quot;&gt;Creepy or Cree.py&lt;/a&gt;. I
200 discovered it when I read
201 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html&quot;&gt;an
202 article about Creepy&lt;/a&gt; in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
203 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
204 The python program was in Debian, but
205 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy&quot;&gt;the version in
206 Debian&lt;/a&gt; was completely broken and practically unmaintained. I
207 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
208 have time to fix it then. This Christmas I decided to finally try to
209 get Creepy operational in Debian. Now a fixed version is available in
210 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
211 are now included
212 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy&quot;&gt;upstream&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
213
214 &lt;p&gt;The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
215 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
216 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
217 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
218 these services. Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
219 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
220 days it is impossible. This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
221 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
222 information to them about your search interests. This should be taken
223 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
224 about yourself with the services.&lt;/p&gt;
225
226 &lt;p&gt;The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
227 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
228 of Norway. One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
229 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
230 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
231 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
232 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
233 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
234 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
235 things. A similar technique have been
236 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl&quot;&gt;used
237 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine&lt;/a&gt;, and it is both a powerful
238 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
239 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
240 public.&lt;/p&gt;
241
242 &lt;p&gt;The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
243 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
244 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
245 python-requests-toolbelt).&lt;/p&gt;
246
247 &lt;p&gt;(I have uploaded
248 &lt;a href=&quot;https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy&quot;&gt;the image to
249 screenshots.debian.net&lt;/a&gt; and licensed it under the same terms as the
250 Creepy program in Debian.)&lt;/p&gt;
251 </description>
252 </item>
253
254 <item>
255 <title>Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</title>
256 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html</link>
257 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html</guid>
258 <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
259 <description>&lt;p&gt;During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
260 &lt;a href=&quot;https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/&quot;&gt;observed
261 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
262 believe a computer have a given security hole&lt;/a&gt; if it download a
263 security fix from a Debian mirror. This is a good reason to always
264 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
265 listening do not know which IP address to attack. In August, Richard
266 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
267 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
268 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
269 &lt;a href=&quot;http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/&quot;&gt;proposed
270 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror&lt;/a&gt;. He
271 was not the first to propose this, as the
272 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor&quot;&gt;apt-transport-tor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;
273 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
274 to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.torproject.org/&quot;&gt;Tor&lt;/a&gt;, but I was not
275 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.&lt;/p&gt;
276
277 &lt;p&gt;Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
278 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
279 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
280 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
281 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.&lt;/p&gt;
282
283 &lt;p&gt;Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
284 installing &lt;tt&gt;apt-transport-tor&lt;/tt&gt; and replacing http and https
285 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
286 of the official Debian mirror site. I recommend installing
287 &lt;tt&gt;etckeeper&lt;/tt&gt; before you start to have a history of the changes
288 done in /etc/.&lt;/p&gt;
289
290 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
291 apt install apt-transport-tor
292 sed -i &#39;s% http://ftp.debian.org/%tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%&#39; /etc/apt/sources.list
293 sed -i &#39;s% http% tor+http%&#39; /etc/apt/sources.list
294 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
295
296 &lt;p&gt;If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
297 the sed commands for these too. The sed command is assuming your are
298 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror. Adjust the command (or just
299 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
300
301 &lt;p&gt;This work in Debian Jessie and later. Note that tools like
302 &lt;tt&gt;apt-file&lt;/tt&gt; only recently started using the apt transport
303 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs. For
304 &lt;tt&gt;apt-file&lt;/tt&gt; you need the version currently in experimental,
305 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable. So if you
306 need a working &lt;tt&gt;apt-file&lt;/tt&gt;, this is not for you.&lt;/p&gt;
307
308 &lt;p&gt;Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
309 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
310 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
311 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine. Using Tor will
312 become normal for the machine in question.&lt;/p&gt;
313
314 &lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox&lt;/a&gt;, APT
315 is set up by default to use &lt;tt&gt;apt-transport-tor&lt;/tt&gt; when Tor is
316 enabled. It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
317 system.&lt;/p&gt;
318 </description>
319 </item>
320
321 <item>
322 <title>Nedlasting fra NRK, som Matroska med undertekster</title>
323 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nedlasting_fra_NRK__som_Matroska_med_undertekster.html</link>
324 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nedlasting_fra_NRK__som_Matroska_med_undertekster.html</guid>
325 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Jan 2016 13:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
326 <description>&lt;p&gt;Det kommer stadig nye løsninger for å ta lagre unna innslag fra NRK
327 for å se på det senere. For en stund tilbake kom jeg over et script
328 nrkopptak laget av Ingvar Hagelund. Han fjernet riktignok sitt script
329 etter forespørsel fra Erik Bolstad i NRK, men noen tok heldigvis og
330 gjorde det &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/liangqi/nrkopptak&quot;&gt;tilgjengelig
331 via github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
332
333 &lt;p&gt;Scriptet kan lagre som MPEG4 eller Matroska, og bake inn
334 undertekster i fila på et vis som blant annet VLC forstår. For å
335 bruke scriptet, kopier ned git-arkivet og kjør&lt;/p&gt;
336
337 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
338 nrkopptak/bin/nrk-opptak k &lt;ahref=&quot;https://tv.nrk.no/serie/bmi-turne/MUHH45000115/sesong-1/episode-1&quot;&gt;https://tv.nrk.no/serie/bmi-turne/MUHH45000115/sesong-1/episode-1&lt;/a&gt;
339 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
340
341 &lt;p&gt;URL-eksemplet er dagens toppsak på tv.nrk.no. Argument &#39;k&#39; ber
342 scriptet laste ned og lagre som Matroska. Det finnes en rekke andre
343 muligheter for valg av kvalitet og format.&lt;/p&gt;
344
345 &lt;p&gt;Jeg foretrekker dette scriptet fremfor youtube-dl, som
346 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvordan_enkelt_laste_ned_filmer_fra_NRK_med_den__nye__l_sningen.html&quot;&gt;
347 nevnt i 2014 støtter NRK&lt;/a&gt; og en rekke andre videokilder, på grunn
348 av at nrkopptak samler undertekster og video i en enkelt fil, hvilket
349 gjør håndtering enklere på disk.&lt;/p&gt;
350 </description>
351 </item>
352
353 <item>
354 <title>OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</title>
355 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html</link>
356 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html</guid>
357 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2015 01:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
358 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I was a kid, we used to collect &quot;car numbers&quot;, as we used to
359 call the car license plate numbers in those days. I would write the
360 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
361 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
362 exotic or special region codes and numbers. It was a fun game to pass
363 time, as we kids have plenty of it.&lt;/p&gt;
364
365 &lt;p&gt;A few days I came across
366 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr&quot;&gt;the OpenALPR
367 project&lt;/a&gt;, a free software project to automatically discover and
368 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
369 &quot;car numbers&quot; in a machine readable format. I&#39;ve been looking for
370 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
371 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition&quot;&gt;automatic
372 number plate recognition&lt;/a&gt; tool only is available in the hands of
373 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
374 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I
375 discovered the developer
376 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/747509&quot;&gt;wanted to get the tool into
377 Debian&lt;/a&gt;, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
378 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
379 archive.&lt;/p&gt;
380
381 &lt;p&gt;Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
382 it into Debian, where it currently
383 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html&quot;&gt;waits
384 in the NEW queue&lt;/a&gt; for review by the Debian ftpmasters.&lt;/p&gt;
385
386 &lt;p&gt;I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
387 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
388 surveillance system? Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
389 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
390 when number plates on my watch list are discovered. Another use case
391 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
392 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
393 car. When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
394 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
395 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway. I
396 guess for such use case it make sense. I am sure there are other use
397 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.&lt;/p&gt;
398
399 &lt;p&gt;If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
400 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
401 before running &quot;debuild&quot; to build the source. Or wait a bit until the
402 package show up in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
403 </description>
404 </item>
405
406 <item>
407 <title>Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</title>
408 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</link>
409 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</guid>
410 <pubDate>Sun, 20 Dec 2015 12:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
411 <description>&lt;p&gt;Around three years ago, I created
412 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;the isenkram
413 system&lt;/a&gt; to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
414 hardware related packages. A GUI system in the isenkram package will
415 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
416 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine. The same
417 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
418 tools in the isenkram-cli package. In addition to mapping hardware,
419 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
420 install needed firmware packages automatically. The key for this
421 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
422 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
423 with.&lt;/p&gt;
424
425 &lt;p&gt;I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
426 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
427 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
428 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
429 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
430 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
431 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/&quot;&gt;the
432 appstream system&lt;/a&gt; was announced. I got in touch and suggested to
433 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
434 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
435 Debian version of appstream.&lt;/p&gt;
436
437 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
438 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
439 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages. The only
440 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
441 pymissile package. I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
442 how do add the required
443 &lt;a href=&quot;https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html&quot;&gt;metadata
444 in pymissile&lt;/a&gt;. I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
445 this content:&lt;/p&gt;
446
447 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
448 &amp;lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&amp;gt;
449 &amp;lt;component&amp;gt;
450 &amp;lt;id&amp;gt;pymissile&amp;lt;/id&amp;gt;
451 &amp;lt;metadata_license&amp;gt;MIT&amp;lt;/metadata_license&amp;gt;
452 &amp;lt;name&amp;gt;pymissile&amp;lt;/name&amp;gt;
453 &amp;lt;summary&amp;gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&amp;lt;/summary&amp;gt;
454 &amp;lt;description&amp;gt;
455 &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;
456 Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
457 Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
458 motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
459 launcher.
460 &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;
461 &amp;lt;/description&amp;gt;
462 &amp;lt;provides&amp;gt;
463 &amp;lt;modalias&amp;gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&amp;lt;/modalias&amp;gt;
464 &amp;lt;/provides&amp;gt;
465 &amp;lt;/component&amp;gt;
466 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
467
468 &lt;p&gt;The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
469 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
470 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel. In this case, it
471 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
472 0202.&lt;/p&gt;
473
474 &lt;p&gt;Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
475 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
476 appstream files. Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
477 these files. A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
478 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
479 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use). But
480 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
481 upstream for this project is dormant.&lt;/p&gt;
482
483 &lt;p&gt;To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
484 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
485 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
486 package under /usr/share/appdata/. I did this by adding the following
487 line to debian/pymissile.install:&lt;/p&gt;
488
489 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
490 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
491 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
492
493 &lt;p&gt;With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
494 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
495 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
496 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
497 question.&lt;/p&gt;
498
499 &lt;p&gt;Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
500 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;DEP-11&lt;/a&gt; proposal.&lt;/p&gt;
501
502 &lt;p&gt;To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
503 try running this command on the command line:&lt;/p&gt;
504
505 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
506 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
507 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
508
509 &lt;p&gt;To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
510 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;my
511 blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
512 </description>
513 </item>
514
515 <item>
516 <title>Bokhandeldistribusjon av boken Fri kultur av Lawrence Lessig</title>
517 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bokhandeldistribusjon_av_boken_Fri_kultur_av_Lawrence_Lessig.html</link>
518 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bokhandeldistribusjon_av_boken_Fri_kultur_av_Lawrence_Lessig.html</guid>
519 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Dec 2015 12:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
520 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Besøk
521 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html&quot;&gt;lulu.com&lt;/a&gt;
522 eller
523 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/Fri-kultur-Norwegian-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/8269018236/&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt;
524 for å kjøpe boken på papir, eller last ned ebook som
525 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;,
526 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub&quot;&gt;ePub&lt;/a&gt;
527 eller
528 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.mobi&quot;&gt;MOBI&lt;/a&gt;
529 fra
530 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
531
532 &lt;p&gt;Jeg ble gledelig overrasket i dag da jeg oppdaget at boken jeg har
533 gitt ut
534 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/Fri-kultur-Norwegian-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/8269018236/&quot;&gt;hadde
535 dukket opp i Amazon&lt;/a&gt;. Jeg hadde trodd det skulle ta lenger tid, da
536 jeg fikk beskjed om at det skulle ta seks til åtte uker.
537 Amazonoppføringen er et resultat av at jeg for noen uker siden
538 diskuterte prissetting og håndtering av profitt med forfatteren. Det
539 måtte avklares da bruksvilkårene til boken har krav om
540 ikke-kommersiell bruk. Vi ble enige om at overskuddet fra salg av
541 boken skal sendes til
542 &lt;a href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons-stiftelsen&lt;/a&gt;.
543 Med det på plass kunne jeg be
544 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html&quot;&gt;lulu.com&lt;/a&gt;
545 om å gi boken «utvidet» distribusjon. Årsaken til at
546 bokhandeldistribusjon var litt utfordrende er at bokhandlere krever
547 mulighet for profitt på bøkene de selger (selvfølgelig), og dermed
548 måtte de få lov til å selge til høyere pris enn lulu.com. I tillegg
549 er det krav om samme pris på lulu.com og i bokhandlene, dermed blir
550 prisen økt også hos lulu.com. Hva skulle jeg gjøre med den profitten
551 uten å bryte med klausulen om ikkekommersiell? Løsningen var å gi
552 bort profitten til CC-stiftelsen. Prisen på boken ble nesten
553 tredoblet, til $19.99 (ca. 160,-) pluss frakt, men synligheten øker
554 betraktelig når den kan finnes i katalogene til store nettbokhandlere.
555 Det betyr at hvis du allerede har kjøpt boken har du fått den veldig
556 billig, og kjøper du den nå, får du den fortsatt billig samt donerer i
557 tillegg noen tiere til fremme av Creative Commons.&lt;/p&gt;
558
559 &lt;p&gt;Mens jeg var i gang med å titte etter informasjon om boken
560 oppdaget jeg at den også var dukket opp på
561 &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.no/books?id=uKUGCwAAQBAJ&quot;&gt;Google
562 Books&lt;/a&gt;, der en kan lese den på web. PDF-utgaven har ennå ikke
563 dukket opp hos &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nb.no/&quot;&gt;Nasjonalbiblioteket&lt;/a&gt;,
564 men det regner jeg med kommer på plass i løpet av noen uker. Boken er
565 heller ikke dukket opp hos
566 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.barnesandnoble.com/&quot;&gt;Barnes &amp; Noble&lt;/a&gt; ennå, men
567 jeg antar det bare er et tidsspørsmål før dette er på plass.&lt;/p&gt;
568
569 &lt;p&gt;Boken er dessverre ikke tilgjengelig fra norske bokhandlere, og
570 kommer neppe til å bli det med det første. Årsaken er at for å få det
571 til måtte jeg personlig håndtere bestilling av bøker, hvilket jeg ikke
572 er interessert i å bruke tid på. Jeg kunne betalt ca 2000,- til
573 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bokbasen.no/&quot;&gt;den norske bokbasen&lt;/a&gt;, en felles
574 database over bøker tilgjengelig for norske bokhandlere, for å få en
575 oppføring der, men da måtte jeg tatt imot bestillinger på epost og
576 sendt ut bøker selv. Det ville krevd at jeg var klar til å
577 sende ut bøker på kort varsel, dvs. holdt meg med ekstra bøker,
578 konvolutter og frimerker. Bokbasen har visst ikke opplegg for å be
579 bokhandlene bestille direkte via web, så jeg droppet oppføring der.
580 Jeg har spurt Haugen bok og Tronsmo direkte på epost om de er
581 interessert i å ta inn boken i sin bestillingskatalog, men ikke fått
582 svar, så jeg antar de ikke er interessert. Derimot har jeg fått en
583 hyggelig henvendelse fra Biblioteksentralen som fortalte at de har
584 lagt den inn i sin database slik at deres bibliotekskunder enkelt kan
585 bestille den via dem.&lt;/p&gt;
586
587 &lt;p&gt;Boken er i følge
588 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bibsys-almaprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=detailsTab&amp;ct=display&amp;fn=search&amp;doc=BIBSYS_ILS71518423420002201&amp;indx=1&amp;recIds=BIBSYS_ILS71518423420002201&amp;recIdxs=0&amp;elementId=0&amp;renderMode=poppedOut&amp;displayMode=full&amp;frbrVersion=&amp;dscnt=0&amp;tab=library_catalogue&amp;dstmp=1448543801124&amp;vl(freeText0)=fri%20kultur&amp;vid=UBO&amp;mode=Basic&quot;&gt;Bibsys/Oria&lt;/a&gt;
589 og bokdatabasen til
590 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.deich.folkebibl.no/cgi-bin/websok?tnr=1819617&quot;&gt;Deichmanske&lt;/a&gt;
591 tilgjengelig fra flere biblioteker allerede, og alle eksemplarer er
592 visst allerede utlånt med ventetid. Det synes jeg er veldig gledelig
593 å se. Jeg håper mange kommer til å lese boken. Jeg tror den er
594 spesielt egnet for foreldre og bekjente av oss nerder for å forklare
595 hva slags problemer vi ser med dagens opphavsrettsregime.&lt;/p&gt;
596 </description>
597 </item>
598
599 <item>
600 <title>The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</title>
601 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html</link>
602 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html</guid>
603 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov 2015 09:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
604 <description>&lt;p&gt;A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
605 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/&quot;&gt;The
606 GPL is not magic pixie dust&lt;/a&gt;&quot; explain the importance of making sure
607 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html&quot;&gt;GPL&lt;/a&gt; is enforced.
608 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:&lt;p&gt;
609
610 &lt;blockquote&gt;
611
612 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png&quot; width=&quot;194&quot; height=&quot;90&quot; alt=&quot;Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
613
614 &lt;blockquote&gt;
615 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.&lt;br/&gt;
616
617 The first step is to choose a
618 &lt;a href=&quot;https://copyleft.org/&quot;&gt;copyleft&lt;/a&gt; license for your
619 code.&lt;br/&gt;
620
621 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
622 &lt;b&gt;it must be enforced&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
623
624 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
625 work&lt;br/&gt;
626
627 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
628 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
629
630 &lt;p&gt;&lt;small&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://ebb.org/bkuhn/&quot;&gt;Bradley Kuhn&lt;/a&gt;, in
631 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/&quot; title=&quot;Free as in Freedom&quot;&gt;FaiF&lt;/a&gt;
632 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/&quot;&gt;episode
633 0x57&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/small&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
634
635 &lt;p&gt;As the Debian Website
636 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/794116&quot;&gt;used&lt;/a&gt;
637 &lt;a href=&quot;https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;amp;r2=1.25&quot;&gt;to&lt;/a&gt;
638 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
639 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
640 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
641 software products. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
642 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
643 such licenses are not enough. With the ongoing adoption of Free
644 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community&#39;s
645 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
646 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always. As Karen
647 and Bradley explained in &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/&quot; title=&quot;Free as in
648 Freedom&quot;&gt;FaiF&lt;/a&gt;
649 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/&quot;&gt;episode 0x57&lt;/a&gt;,
650 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
651 to protect it. The reality of today&#39;s world is that legal
652 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming. With
653 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gpl-violations.org/&quot;&gt;gpl-violations.org&lt;/a&gt; in hiatus
654 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/&quot;&gt;until&lt;/a&gt;
655 some time in 2016, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/&quot;&gt;Software
656 Freedom Conservancy&lt;/a&gt; (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
657 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
658 In March the SFC supported a
659 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/&quot;&gt;lawsuit
660 by Christoph Hellwig&lt;/a&gt; against VMware for refusing to
661 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html&quot;&gt;comply
662 with the GPL&lt;/a&gt; in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
663 kernel. Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
664 conferences
665 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/&quot;&gt;blocked
666 or cancelled their talks&lt;/a&gt;. As a result they have decided to rely
667 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
668 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft. So the SFC has
669 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/&quot;&gt;launched&lt;/a&gt;
670 a &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;campaign&lt;/a&gt; to create
671 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
672 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
673 Software.&lt;/p&gt;
674
675 &lt;p&gt;If you support Free Software,
676 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/&quot;&gt;like&lt;/a&gt;
677 what the SFC do, agree with their
678 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html&quot;&gt;compliance
679 principles&lt;/a&gt;, are happy about their
680 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;successes&lt;/a&gt; in 2015,
681 work on a project that is an SFC
682 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/&quot;&gt;member&lt;/a&gt; and or
683 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
684 &lt;a href=&quot;https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA&quot;&gt;Christopher
685 Allan Webber&lt;/a&gt;,
686 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/&quot;&gt;Carol
687 Smith&lt;/a&gt;,
688 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/&quot;&gt;Jono
689 Bacon&lt;/a&gt;, myself and
690 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt; in
691 becoming a
692 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;supporter&lt;/a&gt;. For the
693 next week your donation will be
694 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/&quot;&gt;matched&lt;/a&gt;
695 by an anonymous donor. Please also consider asking your employer to
696 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC. Don&#39;t forget to
697 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
698 social media accounts.&lt;/p&gt;
699
700 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
701
702 &lt;p&gt;I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
703 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself. Perhaps you should be a
704 supporter too?&lt;/p&gt;
705 </description>
706 </item>
707
708 <item>
709 <title>PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</title>
710 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html</link>
711 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html</guid>
712 <pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2015 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
713 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
714 set it up properly. I wanted to generate it offline and have it
715 available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp&quot;&gt;a OpenPGP
716 smart card&lt;/a&gt; for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
717 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever. But
718 finally I&#39;ve been able to complete the process, and have now moved
719 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key. See
720 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt&quot;&gt;the
721 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key&lt;/a&gt; for
722 the details. This is my new key:&lt;/p&gt;
723
724 &lt;pre&gt;
725 pub 3936R/&lt;a href=&quot;http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html&quot;&gt;111D6B29EE4E02F9&lt;/a&gt; 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
726 Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1 D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
727 uid Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere@hungry.com&amp;gt;
728 uid Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere@debian.org&amp;gt;
729 sub 4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
730 sub 4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
731 sub 4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
732 &lt;/pre&gt;
733
734 &lt;p&gt;The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
735 my old key.&lt;/p&gt;
736
737 &lt;p&gt;If you signed my old key
738 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html&quot;&gt;DB4CCC4B2A30D729&lt;/a&gt;),
739 I&#39;d very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
740 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
741 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.&lt;/p&gt;
742 </description>
743 </item>
744
745 </channel>
746 </rss>