1 <?xml version=
"1.0" encoding=
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2 <rss version='
2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/
1.0/' xmlns:
atom=
"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
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" />
10 <title>Free software car computer solution?
</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html
</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html
</guid>
13 <pubDate>Thu,
29 May
2014 18:
45:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
14 <description><p
>Dear lazyweb. I
'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
15 in my car, connected to
16 <a href=
"http://www.dx.com/p/
400a-
4-
0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-
1440x272-
12v-dc-
57776">a
17 small screen
</a
> next to the rear mirror. I plan to hook it up with a
18 GPL and a USB wifi card too. The idea is to get my own
19 "<a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer
">Carputer
</a
>". But I
20 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
21 such car computer.
</p
>
23 <p
>This is my current wish list for such system:
</p
>
27 <li
>Work on Raspberry Pi.
</li
>
29 <li
>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
30 fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
31 or make a sound). This could be done either using either data from
32 <a href=
"http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">Openstreetmap
</a
> or OCR
33 info gathered from a dashboard camera.
</li
>
35 <li
>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
36 and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
39 <li
>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.
</li
>
41 <li
>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
42 to home server. Try IP over DNS
43 (
<a href=
"http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/
">iodine
</a
>) or ICMP
44 (
<a href=
"http://code.gerade.org/hans/
">Hans
</a
>) if direct
45 connection do not work.
</li
>
47 <li
>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
48 or some stanard car mesh protocol.
</li
>
50 <li
>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
51 (speed calculated between two cameras).
</li
>
53 <li
>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
54 run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.
</li
>
58 <p
>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
59 some or all of these features, please let me know.
</p
>
64 <title>Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release
</title>
65 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html
</link>
66 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html
</guid>
67 <pubDate>Tue,
29 Apr
2014 14:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
68 <description><p
>I
've been following
<a href=
"http://www.getgnash.org/
">the Gnash
69 project
</a
> for quite a while now. It is a free software
70 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
71 plugin. Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
72 newer AVM2 format - see
73 <a href=
"http://lightspark.github.io/
">Lightspark
</a
> for that one),
74 allowing several flash based sites to work. Thanks to the friendly
75 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
76 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
77 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
78 support, but it has not happened yet. If you install both Lightspark
79 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
80 so you can get both handled as free software. Unfortunately,
81 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
82 sites do not work yet.
</p
>
84 <p
>A few months ago, I started looking at
85 <a href=
"http://scan.coverity.com/
">Coverity
</a
>, the static source
86 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
87 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
88 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
89 the projects I decided to check out. Coverity is able to find lock
90 errors, memory errors, dead code and more. A few days ago they even
91 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
92 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
93 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
94 code checkers I have tested over the years.
</p
>
96 <p
>Since a few weeks ago, I
've been working with the other Gnash
97 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity. I was quite happy
98 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the
777 issues
99 detected so far,
374 are marked as fixed. This make me confident that
100 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
101 the previous one. Most of the reported issues were and are in the
102 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.
</p
>
104 <p
>If you want to help out, you find us on
105 <a href=
"https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev
">the
106 gnash-dev mailing list
</a
> and on
107 <a href=
"irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash
">the #gnash channel on
108 irc.freenode.net IRC server
</a
>.
</p
>
113 <title>Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram
0.7)
</title>
114 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html
</link>
115 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html
</guid>
116 <pubDate>Wed,
23 Apr
2014 14:
50:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
117 <description><p
>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
118 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
119 So I implemented one, using
120 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram
">my Isenkram
121 package
</a
>. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
122 run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option,
123 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
". When you
124 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
125 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.
<p
>
127 <p
>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
128 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
129 packages to install. The first part is in
130 <tt
>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc
</tt
> and look like
133 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
136 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
137 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
139 Test-new-install: mark show
141 Packages: for-current-hardware
142 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
144 <p
>The second part is in
145 <tt
>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware
</tt
> and look like
148 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
153 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
155 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
157 <p
>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
158 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
159 have installed on our machines. I
've not been able to find a way to
160 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
161 before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful,
162 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.
</p
>
164 <p
>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
165 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
166 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
167 database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database
168 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
169 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/
719837">#
719837</a
> and
170 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/
730704">#
730704</a
>). The cause is in
171 the python-apt code (bug
172 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/
745487">#
745487</a
>), but using a
173 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
174 reduce the memory leak from ~
30 MiB per hardware detection down to
175 around
2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop
176 daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version
0.7 uploaded to
177 unstable today.
</p
>
179 <p
>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
180 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
181 use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper
182 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
183 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-
11">DEP-
11</a
>, and
184 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects
.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream
.2FDEP-
11_for_the_Debian_Archive
">GSoC
185 project
</a
> will take place this summer to improve the situation. I
186 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
187 start using the information when it is ready.
</p
>
189 <p
>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
190 add a
"Xb-Modaliases
" header to your control file like I did in
191 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile
">the pymissile
192 package
</a
> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
194 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/
">all my
195 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a
> for details on the notation. I expect
196 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
197 moment I got no better place to store it.
</p
>
202 <title>FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid
</title>
203 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html
</link>
204 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html
</guid>
205 <pubDate>Tue,
15 Apr
2014 22:
10:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
206 <description><p
>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
">Freedombox
207 project
</a
> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
208 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
209 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
210 encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
211 today a major mile stone was reached.
</p
>
213 <p
>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
214 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
215 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
216 during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
217 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
218 Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
219 build everything directly from Debian. :)
</p
>
221 <p
>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
222 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup
">freedombox-setup
</a
>,
223 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth
">plinth
</a
>,
224 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite
">pagekite
</a
>,
225 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor
">tor
</a
>,
226 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy
">privoxy
</a
>,
227 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud
">owncloud
</a
> and
228 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq
">dnsmasq
</a
>. There
229 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
230 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
231 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie
">check out
232 the manual
</a
> and help us improve it.
</p
>
234 <p
>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
235 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
236 become root:
</p
>
239 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
240 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
242 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
244 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
245 </pre
></p
>
247 <p
>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
248 devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
249 details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
250 make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
251 virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
252 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
253 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
254 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.
</p
>
256 <p
>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
257 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
258 the preseed values:
</p
>
261 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a
>
262 </pre
></p
>
264 <p
>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
265 it still work.
</p
>
267 <p
>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
268 systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
269 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
270 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
271 during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
272 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
273 be run from the plinth web interface.
</p
>
275 <p
>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
276 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
277 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:
6667/%
23freedombox
">IRC (#freedombox on
278 irc.debian.org)
</a
> and
279 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
">the
280 mailing list
</a
> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p
>
285 <title>Språkkoder for POSIX locale i Norge
</title>
286 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Spr_kkoder_for_POSIX_locale_i_Norge.html
</link>
287 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Spr_kkoder_for_POSIX_locale_i_Norge.html
</guid>
288 <pubDate>Fri,
11 Apr
2014 21:
30:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
289 <description><p
>For
12 år siden, skrev jeg et lite notat om
290 <a href=
"http://i18n.skolelinux.no/localekoder.txt
">bruk av språkkoder
291 i Norge
</a
>. Jeg ble nettopp minnet på dette da jeg fikk spørsmål om
292 notatet fortsatt var aktuelt, og tenkte det var greit å repetere hva
293 som fortsatt gjelder. Det jeg skrev da er fortsatt like aktuelt.
</p
>
295 <p
>Når en velger språk i programmer på unix, så velger en blant mange
296 språkkoder. For språk i Norge anbefales følgende språkkoder (anbefalt
297 locale i parantes):
</p
>
300 <dt
>nb (nb_NO)
</dt
><dd
>Bokmål i Norge
</dd
>
301 <dt
>nn (nn_NO)
</dt
><dd
>Nynorsk i Norge
</dd
>
302 <dt
>se (se_NO)
</dt
><dd
>Nordsamisk i Norge
</dd
>
303 </dl
></p
>
305 <p
>Alle programmer som bruker andre koder bør endres.
</p
>
307 <p
>Språkkoden bør brukes når .po-filer navngis og installeres. Dette
308 er ikke det samme som locale-koden. For Norsk Bokmål, så bør filene
309 være navngitt nb.po, mens locale (LANG) bør være nb_NO.
</p
>
311 <p
>Hvis vi ikke får standardisert de kodene i alle programmene med
312 norske oversettelser, så er det umulig å gi LANG-variablen ett innhold
313 som fungerer for alle programmer.
</p
>
315 <p
>Språkkodene er de offisielle kodene fra ISO
639, og bruken av dem i
316 forbindelse med POSIX localer er standardisert i RFC
3066 og ISO
317 15897. Denne anbefalingen er i tråd med de angitte standardene.
</p
>
319 <p
>Følgende koder er eller har vært i bruk som locale-verdier for
320 "norske
" språk. Disse bør unngås, og erstattes når de oppdages:
</p
>
322 <p
><table
>
323 <tr
><td
>norwegian
</td
><td
>-
> nb_NO
</td
></tr
>
324 <tr
><td
>bokmål
</td
><td
>-
> nb_NO
</td
></tr
>
325 <tr
><td
>bokmal
</td
><td
>-
> nb_NO
</td
></tr
>
326 <tr
><td
>nynorsk
</td
><td
>-
> nn_NO
</td
></tr
>
327 <tr
><td
>no
</td
><td
>-
> nb_NO
</td
></tr
>
328 <tr
><td
>no_NO
</td
><td
>-
> nb_NO
</td
></tr
>
329 <tr
><td
>no_NY
</td
><td
>-
> nn_NO
</td
></tr
>
330 <tr
><td
>sme_NO
</td
><td
>-
> se_NO
</td
></tr
>
331 </table
></p
>
333 <p
>Merk at når det gjelder de samiske språkene, at se_NO i praksis
334 henviser til nordsamisk i Norge, mens f.eks. smj_NO henviser til
335 lulesamisk. Dette notatet er dog ikke ment å gi råd rundt samiske
337 <a href=
"http://www.divvun.no/
">Divvun-prosjektet
</a
> en bedre
340 <p
><strong
>Referanser:
</strong
></p
>
344 <li
><a href=
"http://www.rfc-base.org/rfc-
3066.html
">RFC
3066 - Tags
345 for the Identification of Languages
</a
> (Erstatter RFC
1766)
</li
>
347 <li
><a href=
"http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-
2/langcodes.html
">ISO
348 639</a
> - Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages
</li
>
350 <li
><a href=
"http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg20/docs/n897-
14652w25.pdf
">ISO
351 DTR
14652</a
> - locale-standard Specification method for cultural
352 conventions
</li
>
354 <li
><a href=
"http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg20/docs/n610.pdf
">ISO
355 15897: Registration procedures for cultural elements (cultural
357 <a href=
"http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg20/docs/n849-
15897wd6.pdf
">(nytt
358 draft)
</a
></li
>
360 <li
><a href=
"http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg20/
">ISO/IEC
361 JTC1/SC22/WG20
</a
> - Gruppen for i18n-standardisering i ISO
</li
>
368 <title>S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software
</title>
369 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html
</link>
370 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html
</guid>
371 <pubDate>Wed,
9 Apr
2014 11:
30:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
372 <description><p
>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
373 solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
374 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
375 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
376 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
377 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
378 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
379 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
380 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
381 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
382 I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
383 have looked at a system called
384 <a href=
"https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/
">S3QL
</a
>, a locally
385 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.
</p
>
387 <p
>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
388 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
389 Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
390 providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
391 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
392 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
393 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
394 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
395 while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
396 have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
397 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
398 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
399 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.
</p
>
401 <p
>It is simple to use. I
'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
402 package is included already. So to get started, run
<tt
>apt-get
403 install s3ql
</tt
>. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
404 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
405 <a href=
"https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/
44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy
">how
406 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service
</a
>, because I trust the laws
407 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
408 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
409 in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
410 <a href=
"http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage
">S3QL
411 Filesystem for HPC Storage
</a
> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
412 Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
413 the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
414 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
417 <p
>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
418 system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
419 file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
420 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
421 I
'll refer to it as
<tt
>bucket-name
</tt
> below. In addition, one need
422 the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
423 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
425 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
427 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
428 backend-login: API-login
429 backend-password: API-password
430 fs-passphrase: local-password
431 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
433 <p
>I create my local passphrase using
<tt
>pwget
50</tt
> or similar,
434 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
435 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
436 details and password to create it:
</p
>
438 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
439 # mkdir -m
700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
440 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
441 --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
443 Enter backend password:
444 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user
's guide, especially
445 the
'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data
' section.
446 Enter encryption password:
447 Confirm encryption password:
448 Generating random encryption key...
449 Creating metadata tables...
459 Compressing and uploading metadata...
460 Wrote
0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
461 #
</pre
></blockquote
></p
>
463 <p
>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
465 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
466 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
467 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
468 Using
4 upload threads.
469 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
479 Mounting filesystem...
481 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
482 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1.0T
0 1.0T
0% /s3ql
484 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
486 <p
>The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
487 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
488 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
489 running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
490 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
491 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
493 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
496 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
498 <p
>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
499 correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
500 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the
"already
501 mounted
" flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
502 file system:
</p
>
504 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
505 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
506 Using cached metadata.
507 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
508 Checking DB integrity...
509 Creating temporary extra indices...
510 Checking lost+found...
511 Checking cached objects...
512 Checking names (refcounts)...
513 Checking contents (names)...
514 Checking contents (inodes)...
515 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
516 Checking objects (reference counts)...
517 Checking objects (backend)...
518 ..processed
5000 objects so far..
519 ..processed
10000 objects so far..
520 ..processed
15000 objects so far..
521 Checking objects (sizes)...
522 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
523 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
524 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
525 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
526 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
527 Checking inodes (sizes)...
528 Checking extended attributes (names)...
529 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
530 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
531 Checking directory reachability...
532 Checking unix conventions...
533 Checking referential integrity...
534 Dropping temporary indices...
535 Backing up old metadata...
545 Compressing and uploading metadata...
546 Wrote
0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
548 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
550 <p
>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
551 quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
552 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
553 house. Uploading
685 MiB with a
100 MiB cache gave me
305 kiB/s,
554 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
555 Debian installation ISO gave me
610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
556 Both were measured using
<tt
>dd
</tt
>. So for me, the bottleneck is my
557 network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
558 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
559 working set.
</p
>
561 <p
>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
562 time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
565 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
566 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
567 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
568 Using
8 upload threads.
569 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
571 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
573 <p
>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
574 metadata is uploaded once every
24 hour by default. To ensure the
575 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
576 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
579 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
580 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
581 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
583 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
585 <p
>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
586 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
587 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
590 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
592 Directory entries:
9141
595 Total data size:
22049.38 MB
596 After de-duplication:
21955.46 MB (
99.57% of total)
597 After compression:
21877.28 MB (
99.22% of total,
99.64% of de-duplicated)
598 Database size:
2.39 MB (uncompressed)
599 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
601 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
603 <p
>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
604 storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
605 <a href=
"https://www.greenqloud.com/
">Greenqloud
</a
>,
606 <a href=
"http://drive.google.com/
">Google Drive
</a
>,
607 <a href=
"http://aws.amazon.com/s3/
">Amazon S3 web serivces
</a
>,
608 <a href=
"http://www.rackspace.com/
">Rackspace
</a
> and
609 <a href=
"http://crowncloud.net/
">Crowncloud
</A
>. The latter even
610 accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
611 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
612 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
615 <p
>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
616 and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
617 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
618 science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
620 "<a href=
"http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf
">An
621 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
622 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach
</a
>" by Hsing-Bung
623 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
624 and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.
</p
>
626 <p
>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
627 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
628 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
629 it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
630 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html
">my
631 test code to check file system semantics
</a
>, I was happy to discover that
632 no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
633 directories, if one chooses to do so.
</p
>
635 <p
>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
636 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
637 <a href=
"http://www.tarsnap.com/
">Tarsnap service
</a
>, which also
638 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
639 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
640 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
641 only read from it.
</p
>
643 <p
>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
644 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
645 <b
><a href=
"bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a
></b
>.
</p
>
650 <title>EU-domstolen bekreftet i dag at datalagringsdirektivet er ulovlig
</title>
651 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/EU_domstolen_bekreftet_i_dag_at_datalagringsdirektivet_er_ulovlig.html
</link>
652 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/EU_domstolen_bekreftet_i_dag_at_datalagringsdirektivet_er_ulovlig.html
</guid>
653 <pubDate>Tue,
8 Apr
2014 11:
30:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
654 <description><p
>I dag kom endelig avgjørelsen fra EU-domstolen om
655 datalagringsdirektivet, som ikke overraskende ble dømt ulovlig og i
656 strid med borgernes grunnleggende rettigheter. Hvis du lurer på hva
657 datalagringsdirektivet er for noe, så er det
658 <a href=
"http://tv.nrk.no/program/koid75005313/tema-dine-digitale-spor-datalagringsdirektivet
">en
659 flott dokumentar tilgjengelig hos NRK
</a
> som jeg tidligere
660 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dokumentaren_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_sendes_endelig_p__NRK.html
">har
661 anbefalt
</a
> alle å se.
</p
>
663 <p
>Her er et liten knippe nyhetsoppslag om saken, og jeg regner med at
664 det kommer flere ut over dagen. Flere kan finnes
665 <a href=
"http://www.mylder.no/?drill=datalagringsdirektivet
&intern=
1">via
666 mylder
</a
>.
</p
>
670 <li
><a href=
"http://e24.no/digital/eu-domstolen-datalagringsdirektivet-er-ugyldig/
22879592">EU-domstolen:
671 Datalagringsdirektivet er ugyldig
</a
> - e24.no
2014-
04-
08
673 <li
><a href=
"http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/EU-domstolen-Datalagringsdirektivet-er-ulovlig-
7529032.html
">EU-domstolen:
674 Datalagringsdirektivet er ulovlig
</a
> - aftenposten.no
2014-
04-
08
676 <li
><a href=
"http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/politikk/Krever-DLD-stopp-i-Norge-
7530086.html
">Krever
677 DLD-stopp i Norge
</a
> - aftenposten.no
2014-
04-
08
679 <li
><a href=
"http://www.p4.no/story.aspx?id=
566431">Apenes: - En
680 gledens dag
</a
> - p4.no
2014-
04-
08
682 <li
><a href=
"http://www.nrk.no/norge/_-datalagringsdirektivet-er-ugyldig-
1.11655929">EU-domstolen:
683 – Datalagringsdirektivet er ugyldig
</a
> - nrk.no
2014-
04-
08</li
>
685 <li
><a href=
"http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/data-og-nett/eu-domstolen-datalagringsdirektivet-er-ugyldig/a/
10130280/
">EU-domstolen:
686 Datalagringsdirektivet er ugyldig
</a
> - vg.no
2014-
04-
08</li
>
688 <li
><a href=
"http://www.dagbladet.no/
2014/
04/
08/nyheter/innenriks/datalagringsdirektivet/personvern/
32711646/
">-
689 Vi bør skrote hele datalagringsdirektivet
</a
> - dagbladet.no
690 2014-
04-
08</li
>
692 <li
><a href=
"http://www.digi.no/
928137/eu-domstolen-dld-er-ugyldig
">EU-domstolen:
693 DLD er ugyldig
</a
> - digi.no
2014-
04-
08</li
>
695 <li
><a href=
"http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/technology/european-court-declares-data-retention-directive-invalid-
1.1754150">European
696 court declares data retention directive invalid
</a
> - irishtimes.com
697 2014-
04-
08</li
>
699 <li
><a href=
"http://www.reuters.com/article/
2014/
04/
08/us-eu-data-ruling-idUSBREA370F020140408?feedType=RSS
">EU
700 court rules against requirement to keep data of telecom users
</a
> -
701 reuters.com
2014-
04-
08</li
>
706 <p
>Jeg synes det er veldig fint at nok en stemme slår fast at
707 totalitær overvåkning av befolkningen er uakseptabelt, men det er
708 fortsatt like viktig å beskytte privatsfæren som før, da de
709 teknologiske mulighetene fortsatt finnes og utnyttes, og jeg tror
710 innsats i prosjekter som
711 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
">Freedombox
</a
> og
712 <a href=
"http://www.dugnadsnett.no/
">Dugnadsnett
</a
> er viktigere enn
715 <p
><strong
>Update
2014-
04-
08 12:
10</strong
>: Kronerullingen for å
716 stoppe datalagringsdirektivet i Norge gjøres hos foreningen
717 <a href=
"http://www.digitaltpersonvern.no/
">Digitalt Personvern
</a
>,
718 som har samlet inn
843 215,- så langt men trenger nok mye mer hvis
720 ikke Høyre og Arbeiderpartiet bytter mening i saken. Det var
721 <a href=
"http://www.holderdeord.no/parliament-issues/
48650">kun
722 partinene Høyre og Arbeiderpartiet
</a
> som stemte for
723 Datalagringsdirektivet, og en av dem må bytte mening for at det skal
724 bli flertall mot i Stortinget. Se mer om saken
725 <a href=
"http://www.holderdeord.no/issues/
69-innfore-datalagringsdirektivet
">Holder
726 de ord
</a
>.
</p
>
731 <title>ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software
</title>
732 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html
</link>
733 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html
</guid>
734 <pubDate>Tue,
1 Apr
2014 12:
10:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
735 <description><p
>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
736 2014-
04-
08, in
7 days. But there are heaps of machines still running
737 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
738 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
739 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
740 new operating system. Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
741 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
742 are already well known and covered elsewhere. Most of them involve
743 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
744 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
745 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
746 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
747 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.
</p
>
749 <p
><a href=
"http://www.reactos.org/
">ReactOS
</a
> is a free software
750 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
751 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
752 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
753 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
754 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
755 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing. It is
756 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
757 from the approach taken by
<a href=
"http://www.winehq.org/
">the Wine
758 project
</a
>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
761 <p
>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
762 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
763 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
764 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
765 click directly from the Internet. Check out the
766 <a href=
"http://www.reactos.org/screenshots
">screen shots on the
767 project web site
</a
> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
768 Windows before metro).
</p
>
770 <p
>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
771 operating systems. I
've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
772 virtual machine. The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
773 fine as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, my main test application
774 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
775 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
776 the disk after the installation. So no luck with that test software.
777 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
778 I
've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
779 to work just fine. If you like Windows and want to keep running your
780 old Windows binaries, check it out by
781 <a href=
"http://www.reactos.org/download
">downloading
</a
> the
782 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
788 <title>Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal
</title>
789 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html
</link>
790 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html
</guid>
791 <pubDate>Sun,
30 Mar
2014 11:
40:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
792 <description><p
><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a
>
793 keep gaining new users. Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
794 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu
">#debian-edu
</a
>, with a
795 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
796 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.
</p
>
798 <p
><strong
>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong
></p
>
800 <p
>My name is Roger Marsal, I
'm
27 years old (
1986 generation) and I
801 live in Barcelona, Spain. I
've got a strong business background and I
802 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent. Additionally,
803 I
've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
804 last development phase of a new social networking concept.
</p
>
806 <p
>I
'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
807 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
808 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.
</p
>
810 <p
>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
811 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
814 <p
><strong
>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
815 project?
</strong
></p
>
817 <p
>I discovered the
<a href=
"http://www.ltsp.org/
">LTSP
</a
> advantages
818 with
"Ubuntu
12.04 alternate install
" and after a year of use I
819 started looking for an alternative. Even though I highly value and
820 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
821 change to a more robust and stable alternative. As far as I was using
822 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
823 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself. Surprised, I discovered
824 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
825 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
826 running. I just loved it.
</p
>
828 <p
><strong
>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
829 Edu?
</strong
></p
>
831 <p
>I found a main advantage in that, once you know
"the tips and
832 tricks
", a new installation just works out of the box. It
's the most
833 complete alternative I
've found to create an LTSP network. All the
834 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
835 be made of steel.
</p
>
837 <p
><strong
>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
838 Edu?
</strong
></p
>
840 <p
>I found two main disadvantages.
</p
>
842 <p
>I
'm not an expert but I
've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
843 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I
'm quite
844 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I
'm sure many people with few
845 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
846 or dropped.
</p
>
848 <p
>It
's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
849 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
850 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
851 discourage many people too.
</p
>
853 <p
><strong
>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong
></p
>
855 <p
>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
856 Virtualbox.
</p
>
859 <p
><strong
>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
860 get schools to use free software?
</strong
></p
>
862 <p
>I don
't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
863 attribute in both
"freedom
" and
"no price
" meanings is what will
864 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
865 the
<a href=
"http://www.r-project.org/
">"R
" statistical language
</a
>; a
866 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
867 Today it
's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
868 different level of studies. I believe free and open software will
869 increasingly gain popularity, but I
'm sure schools will be one of the
870 first scenarios where this will happen.
</p
>
875 <title>Dokumentaren om Datalagringsdirektivet sendes endelig på NRK
</title>
876 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dokumentaren_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_sendes_endelig_p__NRK.html
</link>
877 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dokumentaren_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_sendes_endelig_p__NRK.html
</guid>
878 <pubDate>Wed,
26 Mar
2014 09:
50:
00 +
0100</pubDate>
879 <description><p
><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/
">Foreningen NUUG
</a
> melder i natt at
880 NRK nå har bestemt seg for
881 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/news/NRK_viser_filmen_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_f_rste_gang_2014_03_31.shtml
">når
882 den norske dokumentarfilmen om datalagringsdirektivet skal
883 sendes
</a
> (se
<a href=
"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2832844/
">IMDB
</a
>
884 for detaljer om filmen) . Første visning blir på NRK2 mandag
885 2014-
03-
31 kl.
19:
50, og deretter visninger onsdag
2014-
04-
02
886 kl.
12:
30, fredag
2014-
04-
04 kl.
19:
40 og søndag
2014-
04-
06 kl.
15:
10.
887 Jeg har sett dokumentaren, og jeg anbefaler enhver å se den selv. Som
888 oppvarming mens vi venter anbefaler jeg Bjørn Stærks kronikk i
889 Aftenposten fra i går,
890 <a href=
"http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikker/Autoritar-gjokunge-
7514915.html
">Autoritær
891 gjøkunge
</a
>, der han gir en grei skisse av hvor ille det står til med
892 retten til privatliv og beskyttelsen av demokrati i Norge og resten
893 verden, og helt riktig slår fast at det er vi i databransjen som
894 sitter med nøkkelen til å gjøre noe med dette. Jeg har involvert meg
895 i prosjektene
<a href=
"http://www.dugnadsnett.no/
">dugnadsnett.no
</a
>
896 og
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
">FreedomBox
</a
> for å
897 forsøke å gjøre litt selv for å bedre situasjonen, men det er mye
898 hardt arbeid fra mange flere enn meg som gjenstår før vi kan sies å ha
899 gjenopprettet balansen.
</p
>
901 <p
>Jeg regner med at nettutgaven dukker opp på
902 <a href=
"http://tv.nrk.no/program/koid75005313/tema-dine-digitale-spor-datalagringsdirektivet
">NRKs
903 side om filmen om datalagringsdirektivet
</a
> om fem dager. Hold et
904 øye med siden, og tips venner og slekt om at de også bør se den.
</p
>